The walls of red brick, gray with lichens; the rows of wide stone-mullioned windows and hanging oriels; the delicate, fanciful chimneys rising in great clusters above the pointed gables; the broad stone steps leading up to the hospitable door; the smooth green terraces and bowling-lawns, walled in, it is true, but closed with gates of curiously-wrought ironwork meant more for ornament than for defence, all these serve to recall the days when learning and wealth joined hands with the Maiden Queen to raise England from the depths into which she had sunk the days of "the worthies whom Elizabeth, without distinction of rank or age, gathered round her in the ever-glorious wars of her great reign."