Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/130

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Protector "first saw the light of day" has, alas! been pulled down, but an ancient drawing thereof represents it as being a comfortable and substantial two-storied building, apparently of stone, having Tudor mullioned windows and three projecting dormers in the roof. At the commencement of the century the house was standing, and was shown as one of the sights of the place. If only photography had been invented earlier, what interesting and faithful records might have been preserved for us of such old historic places which are now no more! As it is, we have to be content with ancient drawings or prints of bygone England, and these not always skilfully done, nor probably always correct in detail. Furthermore, artists, then as now, perhaps more then than now, romanced a little at times, and therefore were not so faithful to facts as they might have been; as witness many of Turner's poems in paint, which, however beautiful as pictures, are by no means invariably true representations of the places and scenes they profess to portray. Indeed, there is a story told of Turner, who, when sketching from Nature upon one occasion, deliberately drew a distant town on the opposite side of the river to which it really stood, because, as he explained, "It came better so"!

An unknown and very kind friend some time ago most courteously sent me a number of prints from paper negatives taken in the early days of photography by the Fox-Talbot process, and amongst these chanced to be an excellent view of the ancient hostelry of the "George" at Norton St. Philips in Somerset (a wonderful old inn, by the way, which I