Until recently it was astounding to find, amid the rage for alteration and improvement, the formal old-fashioned shape of a trim garden of Queen Anne’s time carefully preserved, its antique summer-houses respected, and the little infant leaden Hercules, which spouted water to cool the air from a serpent’s throat, still asserting its aquatic supremacy, under the shade of a fine old medlar-tree; and all this too in the garden of a London parish workhouse! [Picture: Hercules fountain] Not less surprising was the aspect of the interior. The grotesque workshop of the pauper artisans, said to have been [Picture: Workshop] Lord Shaftesbury’s dairy, and over which was his fire-proof library, was then an apartment appropriated to a girls’ school. On the basement story of the original house the embellished mouldings of a doorway, carried the mind back to [Picture: Doorway] the days of Charles I., and, standing within which, imagination depicted the figure of a jolly Cavalier retainer, with his pipe and tankard; or of a Puritanical, formal servant, the expression of whose countenance was sufficient to turn the best-brewed October into vinegar. The old carved door leading into this apartment is shown in the annexed sketch. Nor should the apartment then occupied by the intelligent master of the workhouse be overlooked. The panelling of the room, its chimney-piece, and the painting and [Picture: Fireplace with painting above] framework above it, placed us completely in a chamber of the time of William III. And we only required a slight alteration in the furniture, and Lord Shaftesbury to enter, to feel that we were in the presence of the author of ‘Characteristics.’ The staircase, too, with its spiral balusters, as seen through the doorway, retained its ancient air. [Picture: Staircase seen through doorway]