their first education at the old Grammar School.  St. Boniface College, established in 1860, is a famous house of training for missionaries.  Warminster has “no villainous gingerbread houses running up and no nasty shabby-genteel people; no women trapesing about with showy gowns and dirty necks, no Jew-looking fellows with dandy coats, dirty shirts and half heels to their shoes.  A really nice and good town” (Cobbett).

The great show-place and excursion from Warminster is Longleat.  To reach the great house and famous grounds we take the western road which reaches the confines of the park in a little over four miles and passes under the imposing mass of Cley Hill, an isolated eminence of about 900 feet, on the summit of which a curious “ceremony” used to take place, as at Martinsell, on Palm Sunday.  The boys and young men from neighbouring villages would ascend the hill to play a game with sticks and balls.  Not one could say why, but that it was “always done.”  Undoubtedly this was an unconscious reminiscence of a pagan spring festival.

Longleat is indeed a “stately home of England” and one of the most famous of those larger mansions that are more in the nature of permanent museums for the benefit of the public than of homes for their fortunate possessors.  In normal times the galleries are open on two or three days in the week, according to the seasons, and holiday crowds come long distances to see the magnificent house and its still more splendid surroundings, perhaps more than to inspect the art treasures which form the nominal attraction.  Still these are very fine and should, if possible, be seen.

[Illustration:  LONGLEAT.]

The origin of “Long Leat”—­the long shallow stream of pond and lakelets artificially widened and dammed—­was, like that of so many other great houses, a monastic one.  An Augustinian Priory stood here before the Dissolution, but when the Great Dispersal took place it had already decayed and no great tragedy occurred.  Protector Somerset had a young man attached to his retinue, and in his confidence, named Sir John Thynne who, when his master lost his head, very adroitly kept his own, afterwards marrying the heiress of a great London merchant—­Sir Thomas Gresham.  This enabled the husband to add greatly to the small property he had already purchased, which included the old priory buildings, and the altered state of his fortunes prompted him to erect a stately residence on the old site.  His first efforts were destroyed by a disastrous fire, but in 1578 the stately house was finished and, as far as the exterior is concerned, was practically as we see it to-day.  The interior was entirely remodelled at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Sir Jeffrey Wyatville.  James Thynne—­“Tom of Ten Thousand “—­was the Lord of Longleat in 1682.  He was engaged to the beautiful sixteen-year-old widow of Lord Ogle, when she had the misfortune to attract the attention of Count Konigsmark, a Polish adventurer,