shorn, but not too near shorn." Stately galleries with colored windows are to run along the banquet side; on the household side, "chambers of presence and ordinary entertainments, with bedchambers." Beyond this court is to be a second of the same square, with a garden and a cloister. Other directions he gives which, if they were carried out, would make a very fine house indeed. But these we may pass over. In short, Bacon's idea of a good house was much like a college. That of Clare, Cambridge, for instance, would have been considered by Bacon as a very good house indeed, though the arrangement of the banqueting-room was not exactly as the philosopher would have it. The College of Christ's in its old form, with the garden square beyond, was still more after the manner recommended by Bacon. [Illustration: ILFORD ALMSHOUSES] It will be seen that we are now a good way removed from the Saxon Hall with the people sleeping on the floor, yet Bacon's house lineally descends from that beginning. All the old houses in London were built in this way, as may be illustrated by many which retain the old form, as well as by those which remain. Hampton Court, for instance, built by Wolsey; Northumberland House, recently taken down; Gresham House, taken down a hundred years ago; Somerset House, still standing, though much altered; the old Navy Office, the court of which still remains; some of the old almshouses, notably Trinity Almshouse, in the Whitechapel Road; Emanuel, Westminster; and the Norfolk Hospital, Greenwich, Gray's Inn, Clifford's Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard's Inn--which contains the oldest house in London--are admirable specimens of Bacon's house; while in the old taverns, of which a few imperfect specimens still exist, we have the galleries which Bacon would construct within his court. In the reign of Elizabeth, while the merchants were growing richer and increasing in number and in wealth, the great nobles were gradually leaving the city. Those who remained kept up but a remnant of their former splendor. Elizabeth refused license for the immense number of retainers formerly allowed; she would suffer a hundred at the most. It was a time rather for the rise of new families than the continued greatness of the old. The nobles, as they went away, sold their London houses to the citizens. Thus Winchester House and Crosby Hall went to merchants; Derby House to the College of Heralds; Cold Harbor was pulled down in 1590, and its site built over with tenements; the Duke of Norfolk's house, on the site of Holy Trinity Priory, was shortly after destroyed, and the place assigned to the newly-arrived colony of Jews. Barnard's Castle alone among the city palaces remained in the possession of a great noble until the fire came and swept it away. [Illustration: OLD TAVERN]