It is this that gives so venerable an appearance to Montacute House;
for, compared with many mansions coeval with it, the ancestral seat
of the Phelips family looks quite double the age. The imposing height
of Montacute as compared, for instance, with Hinton St. George,
gives it stateliness and grandeur, while the other has none. Like
Hardwick, the front of the house is one mass of windows; but it has
not that formal spare appearance, for here there are rounded gables
to break the outline. In niches between the windows and over the
central gable stand the stone representations of such varied
celebrities as Charlemagne, King Arthur, Pompey, Cæsar, Alexander
the Great, Moses, Joshua, Godfrey de Bouillon, and Judas
Maccabeus. They look down upon a trim old garden walled in by a
balustraded and pinnacled enclosure, with Moorish-like pavilions or
music-rooms at the corners. As a specimen of elaborate Elizabethan
architecture within and without, Montacute is unique. In Nash's
Mansions there is a drawing of the western front, which is still more elaborate in detail, and is earlier in date than the rest of the house; and this may be accounted for as it was added when Clifton Maybank
(another house of the Phelips') was dismantled many years ago. But
of this old house there are yet some interesting remains.[22] Inside there is a similarity also to Hardwick with its wide stone
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staircase and its ornamental Elizabethan doorways and fireplaces.
The hospitality in the good old days was in keeping with the lordly
appearance of the mansion. Over the entrance may still be read the
cheery greeting:
"Through this wide opening gate, None come too early, none return
too late."
But in these degenerate days the odds are that advantage would be
taken of such hospitality; and one marvels at the open-handed
generosity such as existed at old Bramall Hall in Cheshire, where the
common road led right through the squire's great hall,[23] where there was always kept a plentiful supply of strong ale to cheer the traveller
on his way. There can have been but few tramps in those days, or
they must have been far
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more modest than they are to-day.