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398 doors of solid English oak, you might well fancy yourself on the threshold of some old guildhall in Nuremburg or Venice. The cellarage and cooking departments show what manner of proceedings took the head and lead of all the questions discussed in the great hall above. Few abbey kitchens even could have exceeded the capacity of roasting beef or doing turtle soup, which this establishment possessed. In the grand old hall you stand face to face with over four hundred years of the town's life and history. On the dais or platform kings and queens and nobles of the realm have been crowned with all the dignities which pompous guilds could bestow. Here loyalty, clad in crimson, has knelt, and uttered with a tremulous voice its magniloquent platitudes to sovereigns who looked as gracious as if they believed it all, and dubbed the blushing kneeler a knight for his pains. The hall is seventy feet long, thirty feet broad, and thirty-four feet high; making excellent proportions for the best aspects and uses of such an apartment. The great north window over the platform or throne gallery, is the centre-piece and first object of attraction that meets the eye on entering. It is the only one that retains its original stained glass, which impresses upon you a more vivid sense of antiquity than even the time-eaten face of the outside wall. The side windows, however, had become so blind and battered by the storms of