Here, at Little Saxham, we have a particularly fine example, of Norman date. It is probable that in this case a desire existed, for some reason now lost to us, to make a greater show than customary, for the tower here is taller than most. Its lower stages are in severely plain flint-work, but the upper storey is quite elaborate and wholly faced with stone. An elaborate monument to Lord Crofts fills one side of a chapel in Little Saxham church. He was one of Charles II.’s merry companions, but here is made to look sufficiently unhappy. The effigies of himself and his wife are shown in painful semi-reclining attitudes, as though they would very much like to get up, but could not. My lord’s expression, underneath his Baron’s coronet, is particularly agonised. The uneventful road on to Bury St. Edmunds is brought to a conclusion by the barracks, the first harbinger of the town, at the outer end of the long wide street called Risby Gate XXVIII I HAVE never been able to see Bury St. Edmunds in the favourable light of Carlyle’s description of the town. Listen to what he says of it: “The _Burg_, Bury, or ‘Berry’ as they call it, of St. Edmund is still a prosperous brisk Town; beautifully diversifying, with its clear brick houses, ancient clean streets, and 20,000 or 15,000 busy souls, the general grassy face of Suffolk; looking out right pleasantly from its hill-slope towards the rising sun: and on the eastern edge of it still runs, long, black, and massive, a range of monastic ruins.... Here stranger or townsman, sauntering at his leisure amid these vast grim venerable ruins, may persuade himself that an Abbey of St. Edmundsbury did once exist; nay, there is no doubt of it: see here the ancient massive Gateway, of architecture interesting to the eye of Dilettantism; and farther on, that other ancient Gateway, now about to tumble, unless Dilettantism, in these very months, can subscribe money to cramp it and prop it.” That is the Carlylean picture of the place, and a very desirable habitation of picturesqueness and all the joys he paints it. But that is not quite the real Bury. How it managed so to impress him is a mystery, for the town itself is commonplace, and the great churches and the ruins of its still greater Abbey are quite distinct from it. Even those Gothic remains are sad and grim, and have not the usual inspiring quality of such vestiges of the past. In fact, nothing in the present condition of Bury in timber, brick, and stone can serve to envisage its ancient story. This is the tragedy of Bury, for that story is one of the most gorgeous of romances.