otherwise would attract no attention. In the middle distance is another sign typical of many which used to exist, but which are seldom found in the present day. Here it stretches across a large part of the public road, but in many cases these signs were made to span the whole width of the street. An example of an elaborate sign may be seen at the Swan Inn, Market Harborough (Fig. 212), and an unpretentious but effective specimen is shown in Fig. 213. [Illustration: FIG. 210.--Chelmsford, Essex. From an Old Print. ] [Illustration: FIG. 211.--Somerset Buildings, Milsom Street, Bath. From an Engraving by Thomas Malton. ] [Illustration: FIG. 212.--SIGN OF THE SWAN HOTEL, MARKET HARBOROUGH.] [Illustration: FIG. 213.--The Sign of an Inn at Salisbury.] In most of the county towns the gentry of the district used to have their winter residences, to which they repaired when the state of the roads rendered locomotion difficult. It must be remembered that the roads in those days, except the most important, were little more than tracks across the country; nothing was done to make them hard or permanent--they merely traversed the natural soil. “Where there is good land there is foul way,” was a saying of the time; and conversely, where the ground was stony the roads were fairly hard. Horace Walpole, among other writers, recounts the difficulties he experienced on country roads in bad weather, and this condition of things accounts for the number of horses which, according to old prints, were harnessed to family coaches. These in their turn were built in a strong and heavy fashion, in order to withstand the shocks to which they were inevitably subjected. When the wet weather came on, families who lived in country houses betook themselves to the town for society and amusement. In places like Nottingham and Derby there still remain a fair number of houses which were built for county magnates, but in every instance they have been diverted from their original purpose and have become business premises. This affords another proof, if such were needed, that no lay out can be expected to retain in perpetuity its original character. Half the squares of London point the same moral. [Illustration: FIG. 214.--RALPH ALLEN’S HOUSE AT BATH.] [Illustration: FIG. 215.--The Aylesford Hotel, Warwick.] No doubt the house at Warwick, which, for the time being, is the Aylesford Hotel (Fig. 215), was built for some such purpose as has just been indicated; it is a handsome and interesting example of the early part of the eighteenth century. Just outside the east gate is the house where Walter Savage Landor was born in 1775. Another house of the same kind is that of Ralph Allen at Bath (Fig. 214), which is an architectural composition of much greater pretensions, now almost hidden from public view. It will be remembered that his country house was Prior Park. [Illustration: FIG. 216.--Shops at Cirencester.]