"Then, as the soft autumnal breeze Just curl'd the lake, just stirr'd the trees, In the blue cloudless weather, How many a gallant hunting train, With hawk in hood, and horse in rein, Forsook thy courts together! "The grandeur of the olden time Mounted thy towers with pride sublime, Enlivening all who near'd them; From Hippocras and Sherris sack Palmer or pilgrim turn'd not back Before thy cellars cheer'd them. "Since thine unbroken early day, How many a race hath pass'd away, In charnel vault to moulder-- Yet Nature round thee breathes an air Serenely bright, and softly fair, To charm the awed beholder. "The past is but a gorgeous dream, And Time glides by us like a stream, While musing on thy story; And sorrow prompts a deep alas! That, like a pageant thus, should pass To wreck all human glory." It is now time to speak more in detail of the main apartment--the chief feature of an ancient residence of every class--the Great Hall, which often gave its name to the whole house. A very able writer has thus lucidly yet briefly told its history:--"In the early houses, the hall is almost the whole house; there is nothing besides, except the requisite offices and a room or two for the lord and the lady. The mass of the household slept how they might in the hall. Gradually, as civilization increased, the accommodation in a house became greater, and the relative importance--sometimes the positive size--of the Hall gradually diminishes. The family gradually deserted it, and the modern luxury of the dining-room was introduced. The _with_drawing-room, that into which they withdrew from the hall, had already appeared. At last, in the sixteenth century, the Hall, though still a grand feature, became, as now, a mere entrance, often with rooms over it." Sometimes, the Great Hall was raised upon an undercroft of stone vaulting, as we see in the Guildhall, the undercroft of which is the finest specimen of its class in the metropolis. Gerard's Hall, in Basing-lane, built by John Gisors, pepperer, Mayor of London in 1245, and is described by Stow as "a great house of old time, builded upon arched vaults, and with arched gates of stone, brought from Cane, in Normandy." Aubrey, writing in the seventeenth century, thus describes, in his quaint way, the characteristics of the old manorial or hall houses of the times of the Plantagenets and Tudors: "The architecture of an old English gentleman's house (especially in Wiltshire and thereabouts) was a high strong wall, a gate-house, a Great Hall, and parlours, and within the little green court, where you come in, stood on one side the _barne_. _They then thought not the noise of the threshold ill musique._"