when it gets through the defence of one's mackintosh collar and meanders down one's back.--No, not a word should be said against molten lead as a sedative; but even its greatest admirers must allow that as a medium of discouragement to an enemy of ordinary sensitiveness it lacked the robustness of the falling Rock. The Decorative note of the Perpendicular period may have been in harmony with such trifling as is incidental to molten lead, but the stern and uncompromising Early Norman gate would defend itself only with the Rock. That was its character; and when a few hundredweight of solid unsculptured stone were dropped from its machicolated parapet upon the armed men who were fiddling with the lock of the gate below, the people in the High Street could hardly have heard themselves chatting across that thoroughfare on account of the noise, and tourists must have fancied that there was a boiler or two being repaired by a conscientious staff anxious to break the riveting record. Everything remains of the Castle gateway except the Gate. The structure is some forty feet high and twelve feet thick. The screen-wall was joined to it on both sides, and when you pass under the arch and through a more humble doorway in the wall you are at the entrance to my Garden of Peace. This oaken door has a little history of its own. For several years after I came to Yardley Parva I used to stand opposite to it in one of the many narrow lanes leading to the ramparts of the town. I knew that the building to which it belonged, and where some humble industry was carried on, embodied the ancient church of Ste. Ursula-in-Foro. The stone doorway is illus- trated in an old record of the town, and I saw where the stone had been worn away by the Crusaders sharpening the barbs of their arrows on it for luck. I had three carefully thought-out plans for acquiring this door and doorway; but on consideration I came to the conclusion that they were impracticable, unless another Samson were to come among us with all the experience of his Gaza feat. I had ceased to pass through that ancient lane; it had become too much for me; when suddenly I noticed building operations going on at the place; a Cinema palace was actually being constructed on the consecrated site of the ancient church! Happily the door and the doorway were not treated as material for the housebreaker; they were removed into the cellar of the owner of the property, and from him they were bought by me for a small sum--much less than I should have had to pay for the shaped stones alone. The oak door I set in the wall of my house, and the doorway I brought down my garden where it now features as an arch spanning one of the paths.