179 



manned during an attack, made it desirable that they should not be 

 unnecessarily extended. To admit of a separate domiciliation of 

 families within them, therefore, the greatest practicable compactness 

 in the arrangement of dwelling-houses soon became imperative. As 

 families increased, the demand for additional house-room was first 

 met by encroachments upon the passages which had been left be- 

 tween the original structures, and by adding upper stories, and ex- 

 tending these outward so as to overhang the street. Before this 

 process had reached an extreme point, however, the town would be- 

 gin to outgrow its walls, and habitations in the suburbs would occur, 

 of two . classes : first, those formed by poor herdsmen and others, 

 who, when no enemy was known to be near at hand, could safely 

 sleep in a temporary shelter, calculating to take their chance in the 

 town when danger came ; and, second, those formed by princes and 

 other men of wealth and power, who could afford to build strong- 

 holds for the protection of their families and personal retainers, but 

 who, iii times of war, yet needed to be in close vicinity to the larger 

 fighting forces of the town. Neither the castle nor the hovel being 

 placed with any reference to the enlargement of the town, or to 

 public convenience in any way, streets were formed through the 

 suburbs, as they became denser, in much the same way as they had 

 been in the original settlement ; then, as the walls were extended, 

 the military consideration again operated to enforce the idea of com- 

 pactness in every possible way. 



The government of these towns also, however its forms varied, 

 was always essentially a military despotism of the most direct and 

 stringent character, under which the life, property, health and com- 

 fort of the great body of their people were matters, at best, of very 

 subordinate consideration. 



Thus the policy, the custom and the fashion was established in 

 the roots of our present form of society of regarding the wants of a 

 town, and planning to meet them, as if its population were a garri- 

 son, to be housed in a barrack, with only such halls and passages in 

 it, from door to door, as would be necessary to turn it in, to sleep 

 and feed, and turn it oYit, to get its rations. 



It naturally fell out that when at length the general advance of 

 society, in other respects, made it no longer necessary that a man 

 should build a castle, and control, as personal property, the services 

 of a numerous body of fighting men, in order to live with some de- 

 gree of safety in a house of his own, apart from others, all the prin- 

 cipal towns declined for a time in wealth and population, because of 

 the number of opulent citizens who abandoned their old residences, 



