And may the stipend be regularly paid to the poor "to the Worldes End," according to the donor's directions, and not be devoted to other and very different purposes, as sometimes has been the case elsewhere with similar gifts, under the specious pretext of changed times!
Judging from the date affixed to these alms-houses, they were standing just as they are now, looking doubtless a little newer, when Charles I. passed a prisoner through here in the charge of General Fairfax; on which occasion, according to long-cherished local tradition, the vicar offered him for his refreshment some wine in the Communion cup. That must have been an eventful day for Baldock.
Not only the alms-houses, but the other buildings round about, of red brick, with the pearly-gray bloom of age over them, were very pleasant to look upon. Perhaps their colour never was so crude and assertive as that of the modern red brick with which we construct our cheap misnamed Queen Anne villas—which have nothing of the Queen Anne about them,—a red that stares at you, and is of one uniform, inartistic hue—a hue quite on a par as regards unsightliness with the chilly, eye-displeasing blue of Welsh slates. Since the railways have come and cheapened communication, Welsh slates have spread over all the land like an ugly curse; you find them everywhere—they have displaced the cheerful ruddy tiles that so well suit the gentle gloom of the English climate and the soft green of its landscapes, they have ousted the pleasant gray stone slab and homely
