Page:Letters from England.djvu/174

 some builder or other produced thousands of windows with queer arches slightly Moorish in character, and at Tavistock all the cottages have an entrance-door like that of Princetown prison. I fear that I have now exhausted the architectural diversity of England.

The most beautiful things in England, however, are the trees, the herds, and the people; and then, too, the ships. But old England comprises those rosy old gentlemen who in the spring-time wear grey top-hats, and in the summer chase tiny balls over golf-courses, and they look so fresh and nice that I should like to play with them if I were eight years old; and the old ladies who always have some knitting in their hands and are rosy, nice-looking and kind, drink hot water and never tell you about their ailments.

On the whole, a country which has contrived to produce the finest childhood and the finest old age certainly possesses something of the best there is in this vale of tears.