Burials.—­“1649 Three soldiers shot to death in Burford
   Churchyard May 17th.”

   “Pd. to Daniel Muncke for cleansinge the Church when the
   Levellers were taken 3s. 4d.”

[Illustration:  Detail of Fifteenth-century Barge-board, Burford, Oxon.]

A walk through the streets of the old town is refreshing to an antiquary’s eyes.  The old stone buildings grey with age with tile roofs, the old Tolsey much restored, the merchants’ guild mark over many of the ancient doorways, the noble church with its eight chapels and fine tombs, the plate of the old corporation, now in the custody of its oldest surviving member (Burford has ceased to be an incorporated borough), are all full of interest.  Vandalism is not, however, quite lacking, even in Burford.  One of the few Gothic chimneys remaining, a gem with a crocketed and pinnacled canopy, was taken down some thirty years ago, while the Priory is said to be in danger of being pulled down, though a later report speaks only of its restoration.  In the coaching age the town was alive with traffic, and Burford races, established by the Merry Monarch, brought it much gaiety.  At the George Inn, now degraded from its old estate and cut up into tenements, Charles I stayed.  It was an inn for more than a century before his time, and was only converted from that purpose during the early years of the nineteenth century, when the proprietor of the Bull Inn bought it up and closed its doors to the public with a view to improving the prosperity of his own house.  The restoration of the picturesque almshouses founded by Henry Bird in the time of the King-maker, a difficult piece of work, was well carried out in the decadent days of the “twenties,” and happily they do not seem to have suffered much in the process.

[Illustration:  The George Inn, Burford, Oxon]

During our wanderings in the streets and lanes of rural England we must not fail to visit the county of Essex.  It is one of the least picturesque of our counties, but it possesses much wealth of interesting antiquities in the timber houses at Colchester, Saffron Walden, the old town of Maldon, the inns at Chigwell and Brentwood, and the halls of Layer Marney and Horsham at Thaxted.  Saffron Walden is one of those quaint agricultural towns whose local trade is a thing of the past.  From the records which are left of it in the shape of prints and drawings, the town in the early part of the nineteenth century must have been a medieval wonder.  It is useless now to rail against the crass ignorance and vandalism which has swept away so many irreplaceable specimens of bygone architecture only to fill their sites with brick boxes, “likely indeed and all alike.”