125 



these Gallic edifices that Strabo describes ? (" Tovg d' oikovq ck 

 CFavidcjv Kai yeppMV S](ov(Ti jxeyaXovQ BoXoeideig, opo(l)op iroWijv erri- 

 "SaWopres.")* Where those of Germany, to which even the Roman 

 historian reluctantly attributes such beauty P-f" Where are now those 

 timber houses, that, even after Alfred had introduced the more durable 

 architecture of stone, continued for ages to be fashionable in England ? 

 Where are the wattled cottages of Cambria, that Giraldus describes 

 in his Itinerary ? Where that castle of Pembroke, constructed in the 

 days of Henry the First " ex virgis et cespite ?":J But to come ia 

 far more recent days, how few are now the vestiges of those cage- 

 beamed houses, that but some two centuries since were the pride 

 and admiration of our ancestors ? In a word, where would even the 

 finest streets of the mighty metropolis be traced in a few centuries if 

 some chilling influence were to avert what in Irish parlance may be 

 termed their perpetual renewal ? — Would not they too be as desolated 

 as if they never had a foundation but in the fancy of bards and the 

 credulity of enthusiasts ? 



The habitations of the humbler classes during this interval, require 

 no foreign illustration. By that peculiar destiny, which seems in 

 many instances in the latter ages to have inverted the glory of Joshua,' 

 and stayed the advance of light from Ireland, the hovels of the first 

 centuries are the hovels of the nineteenth. In the simple circular hut, 

 ribbed with branches woven of withes or osiers, and coated with sods 

 or leaves, which the fevered pauper erects at the road side, or the 



* Geog. lib. 4. 



-f- " Vicos locant non in nostrum morem connexis et cohasrentibus sedificiis : suam quis- 

 que domum spatio circumdat, sive adversus casus ignis remedium, siveinscitia aedificandi. Ne 

 caementorum quidera apud illos aut tegularum usus. Materia ad omnia utuntur informi, et 

 citra speciem aut dilectationem. Qucedam loca diligent'ms Ulinunt terra, ita purd ac splendenle, 

 ut picturam ac lineamenta colorum imHelur." — Tacitus de Moribus Germanorum. 



j See post, period 4. sect. 5. 



