Thanks, then, to these fires, Marlborough is to-day a town of architectural delights, while the older portion of the College is fully as interesting, having been built on the site of the old Castle from designs by Inigo Jones or his son-in-law, Webb. It is thus a noble view along the High Street: the shops, which are interspersed among the private houses, being here and there fronted with covered ways, forming dry walks in wet weather; an arcaded Market House and Town Hall at the eastern end, and a church closing the view in each direction. [Sidenote: _ARCADIAN HUMBUG_] Marlborough College is at the western end of this street, occupying the fine mansion built by Francis, Lord Seymour, in time to entertain Charles the Second, who with his Queen, his brother, and a crowded suite halted here on his way to the West, in one of his Royal progresses. It became the residence of that Earl of Hertford whose Countess had a gushing affection for those tame poets of the eighteenth century whose blank verse was so soothing to the senses and so absolutely restful to the mind--requiring little mental exercise to write, and none at all to read. My Lady held quite a poetic court, of which Pope, Dr. Watts, and Thomson were the shining lights, and squirted amiable piffle about Chloes and Strephons while her fine London guests strutted about the emerald lawns pretending to be Wiltshire peasantry; the ladies wielding shepherds' crooks, and leading lambs made presentable with much expenditure of soap and water, in leashes of sky-blue silk; while the gallant gentlemen, more used, we may be sure, to dining and drinking, learned to play upon oaten reeds, and were quite idyllic and Arcadian. What an astounding time! and how disgusted these fine folks would have been, had they been forced to fare on the fat bacon and small beer of the real shepherds, instead of the kickshaws and the port which helped them to sustain their affectations! The spectacle of that vicious era, pretending to rural simplicity is, perhaps, the most notable example of vice paying homage to virtue that may be given. The folly of the age is almost inconceivable, but it is all preserved for us and duly certified in its literature and in the pictures of the school of Watteau; while this particular instance of it may be voluminously read of in the records of the time, or be conjured up by a sight of the winding walks and grottoes in the Castle gardens, where, perhaps, Dr. Watts may have seen the original busy bee that gave him the first notion of-- "How doth the little busy bee Employ each shining hour, By gath'ring honey all the day From ev'ry opening flower." [Illustration: MARLBOROUGH.] Meanwhile, Thomson was sipping nectar (which is Greek for brandy-punch) with my Lord Hertford, and babbling of other things than green fields. In fact, the literary Lady Hertford found the poet of the "Seasons" to be a drunkard, and he was not invited to any more of her parties.