154 ifcuinefc FUlages in tf)c ttftfu 



weeds. Large rents appeared in the walls, which were 

 generally made of wood, neatly plastered, and he who 

 looked through the breaches saw that tufts of rank grass, 

 had grown up in the spaces between the stones, with 

 which the floors were occasionally paved. The ruins of 

 an antique abbey were often close at hand, with its richly 

 painted windows, broken through and through; or, per- 

 haps, the shattered walls of some hospitable dwelling, in 

 which a Saxon thane had resided. The open space 

 before the house, where, in summer weather, the family 

 used to assemble, where the harp was heard, and the 

 young people amused themselves with sports of various 

 kinds, was overrun with weeds. There was no print of 

 footsteps on the grass, no trace that the place had recently 

 been inhabited; those who once lived there had found 

 another home ; perhaps the low and silent one which 

 alone remains for the houseless and the miserable. 



It was said of the proud Norman, that he loved wild 

 beasts as if he had been their father. He enacted laws 

 for their preservation, which tended to render him 

 extremely unpopular, and while the slaying of a man 

 might be atoned for by a moderate compensation, it was 

 decreed, that whoever should kill a stag or deer, a wild 

 boar, or even a hare, should be punished with total blind- 

 ness.* Even the Norman chiefs, who were in general 

 great lovers of the chase, were prohibited from keeping 

 sporting dogs on their own estates unless they subjected 

 * M. Paris. 



