might be prevented? This prejudice, it is true, rose from a proper principle, and was a proper protest against the age of shams and affectation. Hardly more than two generations ago art was at the lowest ebb, and the chances seemed strongly against its ever reviving. Everything was fantastic and false; a gentleman had his portrait taken as Apollo, and a lady as Ceres or Diana; while the veriest country yokels who could not read, no, nor their children after them, were alluded to with the utmost effrontery by the Georgian poets as Phyllises and Corydons playing on lutes to sheep, or occupying their working-hours in some other useful occupation, and spending their leisure moments in composing iambics to their damsels. It is with positive shame we turn back to such recollections, and half our indignation against the churchwardens of the period, who destroyed so much beauty, vanishes when we consider they only did as their betters; indeed, rich as our island yet is in architectural remains, I believe that since the accession of George III. an almost equal amount to that which remains has been destroyed. But to return to Wenlock from this somewhat lengthy digression, there are remains of a magnificent abbey there founded by the Black monks, and exhibiting several styles of architecture, especially the Early English; and there are mouldings and details of great beauty, but in comparatively recent days, much of this building has been carted away and used up for repairs and outbuildings to farm-houses. [Illustration: LODGE TO MUCH WENLOCK ABBEY.] The charming remain here represented appears to have been an entrance to some part of the abbey buildings, which, according to Dugdale, enclosed a liberty of thirty acres; but the remains are numerous in all directions, and unfortunately we find too many of the carved stones built up in stables and styes, having been removed by the Corydons that formed the subjects of so many pastoral poems of the Georgian age. [Illustration: MARKET PLACE, WENLOCK.]