ramed wood-work with brick filling the interstices; rising for the st part with projecting storeys till they almost closed upon each er at the top. This mode of construction, when the streets were re lanes, made a perpetual twilight in the lower part of the buildand had the further disadvanage of keeping out the sun, and ctually preventing good ventilation. And this was the more nesary, when sewers were unknown and filth and garbage of all scriptions thrown into the street; indeed kites and ravens were couraged because of their carrying off a part of the filth. Evelyn riting before the Fire of London, to urge the necessity of improveent, remonstrates "that the buildings should be composed of such congestion of mis-shapen and extravagant houses, that the streets ould be so narrow and incommodious in the very centre and busiest aces of intercourse, that there should be so ill and uneasy a form of aving underfoot, and so troublesome and malicious a disposure of ne spouts and gutters overhead." A fair idea of street architecture 1 this century may yet be gathered, from the back streets of some of he old towns in the provinces. The Fire of London seemed to create a favorable opportunity for naking the capital a model of arrangement, and Wren who was enrusted with its restoration, produced a plan for raising the city from ts ruins, and laying it out after a regular design, with wide streets and a noble quay. But the necessities of a large houseless population compelled some haste, and the desire of proprietors to reseat themselves on their old possessions, led to an abandonment of the scheme. Much however was accomplished in the way of improvement, for the legislature ordered that in future all the houses in London should be of brick or stone, and the rain-water to be carried off in pipes, and not shot out into the streets by overhead spouts. The materials employed compelled the disuse of the overhanging storeys, and the streets in future had more sun-light and more air. This improvement was gradually adopted in the provinces. The houses erected for country gentlemen were not different from those of a later period, only they were less compact, and had wide passages and large closets. Stairs which beforetime were in some corner, came now to be put in a prominent place. High gables and pointed roofs were yet common, but a general improvement appeared in the workmanship. Of the dwellings of the rural laborer, it need only be said that it remained true to the old type-a low thatched hovel with mud walls, and earth for the floor. It had the one chimney, and one room, with a coping loft above, reached by a rude ladder. In some favored localities, the laborer's home was improved by small lead-lights taking the place of the open or latticed windows. A remarkable stride was taken in furniture, which both in quantity and quality became very superior to anything known before. In the preceding period furniture was so scarce, that nobles carried bed and bedding and many other articles about with them, even to the furniture of the kitchen, and glass windows. But of Charles I. it is recorded, that he had twenty-four palaces so complete in internal fittings, that he was not obliged to transport any article when he moved from place to place. The improvement in tables, cabinets, wardrobes, &c. was partly due to the introduction of new woods, more particularly mahogany, which soon superseded all others, as it was found that its beauty increased by use and age. The period endel with the carved and gilt furniture commonly called "à la Louis Qu torze". Tapestry began to give way to paper and leather hanging and walls were adorned with paintings, but after the establishe of the Gobelin tapestry in France, 1677, it soon found patronage this country among the higher classes. Both Turkey and Pers carpets were in use, though mostly employed for covering tables, floors being either matted or strewed with rushes, except those! state or bedrooms. Oilcloth after the "German way" was in lo advertised for sale at Ludgate Hill. 7. THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE. The decline of the active out-door amusements, which commenced in the reign of Ehrbeth, went on rapidly. Both James and his son Charles endeavoure to revive the olden sports among the common people, by the publie tion of the Book of Sports, but these efforts were fruitless, for spirit of the age was against them. The tendency was rather amusements within doors, which proved far from being a moral g as soon appeared in the increase of gambling and tippling. The or nary sports of the poorer classes appear, from James's proclamatio in 1618, to have been dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May-games Whitsun-ales, morris dances, and setting up of Maypoles; the game prohibited on the Sunday were the baiting of bears and bulls, inter ludes, and bowling. Perhaps nothing had for this class equal relish with a wake or fair, rejoicing in its puppet-shows, pedlars' wares, and drinking booths. Met on such occasions the peasants contended for the palm in wrestling, cudgel-playing, and foot-racing; even lasse ran for the prize of a new under-garment. Nor did the clowns object to grin through a horse collar, for a prize to the ugliest face, or to yawn at midnight for a Cheshire cheese. While country fairs may be taken to indicate the tastes of the rural population, the following notices of Bartholomew Fair will show that the amusements provided for towns-folk were less simple but more vicious. In 1702 the Lordmayor issued a proclamation for the suppression of the “ great profaneness, vice, and debauchery, too frequently practised there". To accomplish this, all persons were forbidden to let, set, or hire, any booth "for interludes, stage-plays, comedies, gaming-places, lotteries, music-meetings, or other occasions or opportunities for enticing, as sembling, or encouraging idle, loose, vicious, and debauched people together, under colour and pretence of innocent diversion and recre ation." A few years later, a writer, as one of the reasons for limiting this fair, urges that some of the raree-shows exhibited a series of indecent paintings to the youth of both sexes. Ascending to the higher classes, the ordinary amusements show low moral tone to have been generally prevalent. Gambling from the reign of James was a special vice of courtly life; every noble house had its basset-table, and immense sums were lost in the turning of a die or a card. Hence "ancient manors tumbled to decay; the hereditary estates of centuries, became the property of the men of yesterday, and the time-honored names of the ancient families, disappeared from the scroll of English heraldry, and soon ceased to be remembered." Even ladies entered into this vice with ardour, and not always with regard to the rules of fair play. It is further said of them, that although the English taverns were dens of filth, tobacco ke, roaring songs, and roysters, yet women of rank found enteriment in such places. Private theatricals and masques partook of character of the age, and though sometimes without offence, were frequently incentives to evil. Less objectionable were hunting, ing, rowing-matches, tennis, and skating; the nobility and gentry both sexes still retained a taste for the low exhibitions of bearting and cock-fighting. Bear-gardens excepted, almost the only places of public amusement re the theatres. Before the civil war there were five companies of blic players in London, but by an ordinance of the Long parliaent in 1642, the theatres were closed on the ground that public ge-plays did not agree with seasons of humiliation. This measure as enforced by subsequent ordinances of great severity, and yet the id was not secured, for both in the capital and the provinces, the ayers found patrons. After the Restoration, play-going became a idge of loyalty, and the theatres were more crowded than ever. Loveable scenery was introduced, and celebrated singers and dancers ere brought over from the continent, but no addition was so attracve as the introduction of females upon the stage. Boys had hitherto erformed the parts of women, now the audience gloated over the emale characters, to whom the depraved taste of the age frequently ssigned parts of the lewdest description, and language unfit to be ised anywhere. 66 8. DAILY LIFE OF THE RURAL GENTRY. The rural knight or quire inhabited a huge building, half house, half castle, crowded with ervants in homespun blue coats, many of whom were only serviceable n filling up the blank spaces of the mansion; but, as these men had been born in his worship's service, it was held a matter of course hat they should live and die in it. The family rose at day-break, and first of all assembled to prayers, which were read by the family chaplain. Then came breakfast, after which the master of the household and his sons got into the saddle, and went off to hunt the deer, followed by some score of mounted attendants, while the lady and her daughters superintended the dairy or the buttery, prescribed the day's task for the spinning-wheels, dealt out the bread and meat at the gate to the poor, and concocted all manner of simples for the sick and infirm of the village. If leisure still remained, the making of confections and preserves was a never-failing resource, independently of spinning and sewing, or perhaps embroidering some battle or hunting piece which had been commenced by the housewives of the preceding generation. At noon the dinner was served up in the great hall, the walls of which were plentifully adorned with stags' horns, casques, antique brands, and calivers; and the noisy bell that sent the note of warning over the country, gave also universal invitation and welcome to the hospitable board; and after dinner, sack or home-brewed October occupied the time till sunset, when the hour of retiring to rest was at hand. Such was the ordinary history of a day. When the weather prevented out-door recreation or employment, the family library, containing some eight or ten large tomes, that perhaps had issued from the press of Caxton or Wynkyn de Worde, was in requisition." But this simple kind of life gradually declined, the tide set in more and more towards the metropolis, and life in town proved ruinous to thousands, not less in morals than in fortune. Section IV. Employments of the People. : EXPLOTYINTS CONNECTED WITH THE PRODUCTION OF EX onuerta, modny a of the formy case In SITO, LAN my nie, mr be expected, 3 CURR manda die we are told that implemen'SES 101 cte writer averts, in almost eve TELEIT were not wELDEZ Becks ca wis wanng the alternate system pur ZULUys or elover after a cora we be which half the land was alrea the period, except in partenar manure was perfectly understood The Commerce and wealth of the nation in La Junts pepersons, according to quay velte te trezij-ix years purchase. This led t by "endotz, manuring taking in of waste What was poor and barren”. And yet at the be seth century, the uninclosed land was estimated at the kingdom: since that period no less than ten thous Love heen gained from heath or swamp, wand pt. The Royal Society did service to agriculture by introduc Desinglements of bushandry and new manures, besides encourata esses in busher dry. According to King's estimate in 10 men and lower freefolders made about one-fifth of the ext lathon, with an average income of less than fifty pounds for e In the early part of the seventeenth century, grazing was mangya afer the old fashion, the cattle were therefore poor, and reduced * very limited numbers during the winter months." It was only towar the end of the century that improvements on a small scale commenced and the introduction of turnip husbandry provided for the sustent" Y of cattle when grass was scarce; clover too was introduced, and with these additions, cattle and sheep began to be kept and fattened throug the winter months. The improvements in breed and feeding since to Stuarts, are seen by comparing the average nett weight in 1710 ani 1800; at the former date cattle weighed 370 lbs. and sheep 25lbs., 3: the latter, their weights were respectively 800 lbs. and 80 lbs. In the Fen districts, slowly improving by drainage, immense flocks of geese were fed for the London market, to which they were driven in drove of a thousand or more from August to October. Improvements in gardening, commenced in the reign of Elizabeth. made greater progress than agriculture. Hartlib, a writer on agric ture about the middle of the century, states that persons then livi recollected "the first gardeners who came into Surrey to plant cal bages, cauliflowers, and to sow turnips, carrots, and parsnips, to soF early pease, all which at that time were great wonders, we having few or none in England, but what came from Holland or Flanders. . I would instance divers other places [besides Gravesend] in the north and west of England, where the name of gardening and hoeing scarcely known." Market gardens grew up about London, and the vegetables enumerated by Hartlib were cultivated in sufficient quantities to render further importation unnecessary, so far as the metropolitan district was concerned, but it took some time longer before these things were generally grown throughout the country. Sir William Temple proved by experiments that fruits, the natives of more favored climates, could with the help of art, be grown on English ground. The ornamental part of gardening was improved by the introduction of new plants and flowers, though the Dutch fashion of clipping shrubs into fantastic forms still retained its place. From some cause the English fisheries appear to have fallen off. While the Dutch are said to have made £2,000,000 annually, of fish caught principally in the British seas, the English kept up but a trifling trade with the Mediterranean, not exceeding £100,000. Billingsgate and Yarmouth however kept up their character, and supplied their customers with fish in large quantities. It may be mentioned here, that companies were formed in James I., for carrying on the whale fishery, and 1617 is mentioned as the earliest year in which whale-bone was brought home along with the blubber. 2. LABOR IN HANDICRAFTS. Carpenters during this period formed a larger proportion of the craftsmen than at present, by reason of the greater use of wood in ordinary structures. Their working tools had increased in number and improved in quality, and their workmanship in some departments attained an excellence little short of our own. The advance in house-fittings and furniture was unprecedented, the latter executed in so superior a style, both in respect to elegance of form and durability of material, that it is now sought for with avidity. In the matter of ship-building, the English excelled all other nations, as the Dutch themselves acknowledged. Great improvements were being made in all kinds of ironware and tools of various kinds. But Sheffield and Birmingham were yet in their infancy, the former towards the end of the period had but one grinding mill, and the latter made little else than iron tools and implements of husbandry, till the reign of William III., when the making of firearms was commenced. In the same reign, iron pots, chimney backs, frying-pans, and anvils, were among the imports. and yet England was accounted to excel in castings, particularly of cannon; in the reign of Charles I., more than six hundred were cast in the Forest of Dean for the States-General of Holland. Castings were still made in Kent and Surrey, but only to a limited extent, because of the failure of wood; almost the last production of the works in the former county, was the fence of iron railings round St. Paul's Cathedral. From a work published in 1677, we gain important information of the extent to which the iron trade had reached. "First, I will begin in Monmouthshire, and go through the Forest of Dean, and there take notice what infinite quantities of sow-iron is there made, with bar-iron and wire. And consider the infinite number of men, horses, and carriages, which are to supply these works, and also digging of iron-stone, providing of cinders, carrying to the works, making it into sows and bars, cutting of wood and converting it into charcoal. Consider also, in these parts the woods are not worth the cutting and bringing home by the owners to burn in their houses; and it is because in all these places there are pit coals very cheap. the |