Rustic Manners and Customs. 75 



people were most accustomed to congregate, and the promi- 

 nence given to tlie annual state entry into the assize town of 

 the royal judges on circuit, did more to shield the peaceful 

 country folk from violence than any of the rude forms of police 

 protection then in vogue. 



The bulk of the landed aristocracy dwelled for the greater 

 part of the year in their isolated country seats, living in much 

 the same fashion as their fathers before them. There was, 

 indeed, none of the grandeur of the feudal polity. The stew- 

 ards, chamberlains, and comptrollers of the household had 

 dwindled down to one or two trusted officials. The grooms of 

 the buttery, the purveyors of the spicery, the yeomen of the 

 chandlery, the scourers, turn-broaches and door-keepers of the 

 kitchen, the salfary man and furner of the pastry department, 

 the clerks of the various offices below stairs, and the cup- 

 bearers, carvers, sewers, gentlemen-ushers and pages above 

 stairs had gone out with the abolition of liveries. The great 

 houses were far healthier, far brighter, and far sweeter, not 

 only on account of the smaller retinues inhabiting them, but 

 because architectural skill had taken a lesson from sanitary 

 science. The blind staircases, the low ceilings, the dark win- 

 dows, the rambling rooms with their steps of access, leading up 

 or leading down, out of one apartment and into another, had 

 begun to give place to compact and uniform basements and 

 stories. Fine sash windows and lofty plastered ceilings not 

 only brightened up their interiors, but stopped the passage of 

 dust and deadened noises overhead. 



Kalm the Swede, who came on a visit to England in 1748,* 

 and offered our forefathers that " fae's giftie " of seeing them- 

 selves with another's eyes, describes most of the better houses 

 in the home counties as thus early built of bricks and roofed 

 with either concave or flat tiles, torched with clay beneath to 

 keep out the snow, and with their chimneys built (as a pre- 

 caution against fire) with three outer walls on to the gable 

 ends. 



Lastly there was that English peculiarity, the open fire- 

 place, which, in the opinion of natives, comforted the body, 

 ^ Kalm's Visit to England, Translation by Jas. Lucas, p. 9. 



