Drawing near, at the sides of the porch, are found seats usually of stone. In front, closing the entrance to the house, there is a strong oaken door studded with heads of great iron nails. Inside are chambers and corridors, many and varied, an easy and antique staircase leading to the single upper storey, the walls everywhere hidden by oaken panels grooved and carved, and in the daintier parts divided by fluted pilasters; while across the ceilings, which are usually low, run the ancient beams which support the floor above. So lavish is the employment of oak, that, when this place was built, surely one thinks a forest must have been felled. But those were the days of giant trees, the equals of which in this country will probably never be seen again, though in the landscape they are not missed. Inside, again, how cheery the capacious and friendly hearth, spanned by a vast arch; above it, not uncommonly, a pair of huge antlers that talk of joy in the chase. Inside, again, one gets glimpses of heraldic imagery, commemorative of ancient family honours, rude perhaps in execution, but redeemed by that greatest of artists, the Sunshine, that streaming through shows the colours and casts the shadows. Halls such as these existed until quite lately even in the immediate suburbs of Manchester, in the original streets of which town there were many black-and-white fronts, as to the present moment in Chester, Ludlow, and Shrewsbury. Some of the finest of those still remaining in the rural parts of Lancashire will be noticed in the next chapter. Our illustrations give for the present an idea of them. When gone to decay and draped with ivy, like Coniston Hall, the ancient home of the le Flemings, whatever may be the architecture, they become keynotes to poems that float over the mind like the sound of the sea. In any case there is the sense, when dismemberment and modernising have not wrought their mischief, that while the structure is always peculiarly well fitted for its situation, the outlines are essentially English. It may be added that in these old Lancashire halls and mansions the occurrence of a secret chamber is not rare. Lancashire was always a stronghold of Catholicism, and although the hiding-places doubtless often gave shelter to cavaliers and other objects of purely political enmity, the popular appellation of "priest's room," or "priest's hole," points plainly to their more usual service. They were usually embedded in the chimney-stacks, communication with a private cabinet of the owner of the house being provided for by means of sliding shutters. Very curious and interesting refuges of this character exist to this day at Speke, Lydiate, Widnes, and Stonyhurst, and in an old house in Goosenargh, in the centre wall of which, four feet thick, there are two of the kind. In a similar "hole" at Mains Hall, in the parish of Kirkham, tradition says that Cardinal Allen was once concealed. XI THE OLD HALLS (_continued_)