of the maids or the brewer. One to keep the horse. A warrenor to serve as a cator when your other servant shall be abroad for making other provisions. Lastly, a footboy.'

'Ale' or 'Beere' was drunk in large quantities, and was evidently the name given to almost any kind of strong drink. That ordinarily used was probably spiced, ladies and children drinking it as freely as they now do barley-water. 'Posset' ale and 'compounded' ale were taken medicinally, and often mixed with ordinary drink. A prescription for a child of three suffering from its teeth has a special direction that the medicine is to 'be given at night in its posset of beere.'

After her marriage to Sir Francis Fane, Mary Mildmay still spent a considerable portion of each year in her old home; and her numerous children were an absorbing interest to their grandmother, the great affection she had for them being mutual. To judge by a portrait painted in her later years, it is easy to imagine Lady Mildmay as an ideal grandmother. The picture represents her as an elderly woman with a small face, delicate features, grave brown eyes, and lips which, though thin, show a gentle sad smile, as of one who has suffered much, but whose suffering has only made her more gentle and loving. The accessories of the picture are evidently intended to show her chief occupations. In her hand is a small clasped volume, apparently a prayer-book; on the table behind her are more books, with bottles and jars-a reminder of her housekeeping accomplishments-and also a work-box.

So long as the picture hung in her old home, the story went that at dead of night she stepped out of the frame and passed through the house and village to see that all was well and in order, dropping sixpences for all in need. The sixpences do not appear to have been found; but, in looking at the picture, it would be difficult to associate any but deeds of kindliness and charity with such a ghost. On the background of the picture is inscribed what was said to be her favourite motto: The minde alwayes employed in good things avoydeth evill, pleaseth God, and promiseth a happy end.' This was the burden of many exhortations addressed to her grandchildren, which were. cherished and preserved in a small embroidered book by one of the granddaughters.

The eldest grandson, Mildmay, was to inherit the property; and on his departure to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Lady Mildmay wrote affectionately exhorting him to preserve unspotted the ancient and noble blood of your grandmother, the Ladie le Despencer, evermore as she hath done, chaste and upright in all conversation.' She seems to have feared that the young and lively granddaughters might incline too much to worldly gaiety, and warns them that the discourses between worldlings neither profitt themselves nor the bystanders, for they are one of [with] powdering, curling and painting and such like; but I like this powdering, to strive to make the heart white and cleane and innocent from all evill.' These maxims, however, were not intended to mark a puritanical dislike of beauty or adornment, for the family pictures show them all richly and becomingly dressed, the portrait of the granddaughter who so carefully recorded these sayings being remarkable for the rich and curious lace with which her dress is covered. Specimens of elaborate needlework done by Lady Mildmay and her daughter still remain, and show their efforts to beautify the interior of the house according to the ideas of the day, while the quaint mottoes in many of the rooms point to a genuine love of art and especially of music. Puritanism had not yet acquired the gloomy character of a later generation, when the licentiousness of the Stuart Court found its opposite balance in the rigid austerity of those who followed Calvinistic teaching; and no doubt there was much life and brightness in the hall and gallery when all the grandchildren were gathered together. Mildmay, the eldest, was fond of acting, and he wrote several plays, which the family and household performed at Christmas-time.

Whatever may have been the difference between Sir Anthony and Lady Mildmay in early days, the mellowing influence of fifty years of common joys and sorrows made them a devoted couple, of whom their daughter records, 'They loved their own home above all other places; they served God devoutly, in prayer morning and evening, and entertained and courteously entreated their friends and neighbours with honest merriment; but they never allowed idle gossip or ill-natured stories, allowing nothing to pass to the hurt of any present or absent.'

Sir Anthony died in 1617; and Lady Mildmay's last entry in her journal ends with a meditation on the corps of my husband,' in which she gives thanks to God for 'His extraordinary favour to my husband in divers ways.' After enumerating the many occasions on which his life had been preserved in sickness and accident, she closes with these words:

'He was not covetous nor worldly; he loved hospitality and bountie; he was of a free heart and good nature, and never deceaved any trust. I carryed alwayes that reverent respect towards him in regard of my good conceipt which I had of the good partes I knew to be in him, that I could not fynde in my heart to challenge him for the worst worde or deede which ever he offered me in all his lyfe, as to say, Why spake you thus? or why did you that; but in silence passed over all such matters betwixt us; so that we parted in all love and Christian charity untill our happy meeting in Heaven. Soe longe as my corps is above earth, I cannot but think upon him in this manner, and beseech the Lord's good pleasure to follow him in my happy end. And soe I take my leave of his corps for ever, committing him to his earthly habitation and the performers of his honourable funeral, wherein is solemnised the conjunction of our first originall beginning earth to earth; yet not to rest there, but as a free passage to the freedom of Eternity.'

Lady Mildmay survived her husband three years. They are both buried in the village church, to which their daughter added a memorial chapel containing a monument with recumbent effigies of her parents. The old knight is represented in armour, his face handsome and refined, but rather weak. The figure of his wife is richly dressed in an ornamental robe, a large ruff and a jewelled girdle. Her brow and the upper part of her face show far more powerful intellectual development than his, her firm mouth being tempered, as in her picture, by the sad sweet smile on her lips. They lie facing the window, the canopy above them supported by allegorical figures representing the Christian virtues they had practised in life. The whole monument is heavy but handsome in its details. The quaint epitaph composed by their daughter runs as follows::

'Here sleepeth in the Lord, with certaine hope of Resurrection, Sir Anthony Mildmay, Kt., eldest sonne to Sir Walter

Mildmay, Kt., Chancellor of the Exchequer to Queene Elizabeth. He was Embassadour from Queen Elizabeth to the most Christian King of France, Henry ye 4th, 1596. He was to Prince and countrie faithfull, and serviceable in Peace and Warre, to Friends constant, to Enemies reconciliable; bountiful and loved hospitality. He died Sept. 11th, 1617. Here, also, lyeth Grace, Ladie Mildmay, the only wife of the said Sir Anthony Mildmay, who lived 50 years married to him and 3 years a widow after him. She was most devout, unspottedly chaste, mayd, wife, and widow; compassionate in hearte and charitably helpful with phisick, clothes, nourishment or counsell to any in misery. She was most careful and wise in managing worldly estate, so as her life was a blessing to hers, and in her death she blessed them, which happened July 27th, 1620.

'Thus, this worthy payre having lived here worthily, dyed comfortably, beloved of God, lamented of men, in whose memory, to invite to the example of their virtues, Sir Francis Fane, Kt., son and heyre of the Rt Honble Mary Lady le Despencer, and his wife Mary, daughter and heyre to the said Sir Anthony and Ladie Mildmay, have erected this monument,'

The life of Grace Mildmay was one of genuine piety; her faith was simple and sincere and showed itself in works; and, with all our superior knowledge, what more can we do that will add to the world's good than was done by this quiet lady, whose own record of her life shows how faithfully she strove to carry out the motto written on the fly-leaf of her journal, Trye and Trust'?

·

RACHEL WEIGALL.

Art. 7.-GOTHIC AND RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE. 1. A History of Renaissance Architecture in England, 1500-1800. By Reginald Blomfield, M.A. Two vols. London: Bell, 1897.

2. The Arts in Early England. By G. Baldwin Brown. Two vols. London: Murray, 1903.

3. Reason in Architecture. By T. G. Jackson, R.A. London: Murray, 1905.

4. Gothic Architecture in England. By Francis Bond. London: Batsford, 1906.

5. Sir Christopher Wren. By Lena Milman. London: Duckworth, 1908.

6. A History of Architectural Development (The Architect's Library). By F. M. Simpson, F.R.I.B.A. Vols. I and II. London: Longmans, 1905, 1909.

7. An Eighteenth Century Correspondence.

Edited by

Lilian Dickins and Mary Stanton. London: Murray, 1910.

THE quarrels of near relations are proverbially the most bitter and persistent; and, in considering the battle of the styles in architecture, which raged so fiercely in days comparatively recent, we are inclined to believe that the common descent of the Gothic and Renaissance styles from Roman models, through divers stages of Lombard and Romanesque development, may be assigned as one of the chief causes of the heats which inflamed the protagonists in those conflicts. The Catholic fervour of Pugin and the sombre dogmatism of Freeman's early writings are now almost forgotten; and only a few middle-aged men recall the days when Ruskin wielded a power strong enough to inflict upon his university the fabric which now enshrines its scientific treasures. If the battle of the styles rages no longer, it is not because the champions have lost faith, but rather because of the attitude of the public, which stares indifferently at architecture good or bad, and cares nothing, seemingly, for the advent of that common-sense style which is to subserve all our needs and compose all our differences at the same time.

The Romans were the architects, just as they were the legislators and the road-makers, of the world at the