The country houses which we passed had sometimes open galleries or
arcades on the second story and above, where the inhabitants might
perform their domestic labor in the shade and in the air. The houses
were often ancient, and most picturesquely time-stained, the plaster
dropping in spots from the old brickwork; others were tinted of pleasant
and cheerful lines; some were frescoed with designs in arabesques, or
with imaginary windows; some had escutcheons of arms painted on the
front. Wherever there was a pigeon-house, a flight of doves were
represented as flying into the holes, doubtless for the invitation and
encouragement of the real birds.
Once or twice I saw a bush stuck up before the door of what seemed to be
a wine-shop. If so, it is the ancient custom, so long disused in
England, and alluded to in the proverb, "Good wine needs no bush."
Several times we saw grass spread to dry on the road, covering half the
track, and concluded it to have been cut by the roadside for the winter
forage of his ass by some poor peasant, or peasant's wife, who had no
grass land, except the margin of the public way.
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