very

An English gentleman's mansion, to this period, consisted of a good high strong wall, a gatehouse, a great hall, and parlour; and within the little green court, where you came in, stood on one side the barn. It is, however, very difficult to discover any fragments of houses inhabited by the gentry, before the reign, at soonest, of Edward III., or even to trace them by engravings in the older topographical works; not only from the dilapidations of time, but because few considerable mansions had been erected by that class. It is an error to suppose, that the English gentry were lodged in stately, or even in well sized houses. They usually consisted of an entrance passage, running through the house, with a hall on one side, a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above; and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices. Such was the ordinary manorhouse of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Larger structures were erected by men of great estates during the reign of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; but very few can be traced higher; and Mr. Hallam, an historical writer of high character, conceives it difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman, and not of the castle description, the principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. *

* History of the Middle Ages. The Rev. Mr. Lysons, in his Description of Berkshire, says: The most remarkable fragment of early building which I have any where found mentioned is at a house in Berkshire, called Ap

We turn aside from our immediate subject to note, from an old writer, a few particulars of the state of society to the time at which we have arrived in our notice of the architecture. "The government, till the time of Henry VIII. was like a nest of boxes, one within the other; for copyholders held of the lord of the manor, who held of a superior lord, who held himself perhaps of a superior lord or duke, who held of the king. Upon any occasion of bustling in those days, a great lord sounded his trumpet (all lords kept trumpeters, even down to James the First) and summoned those that held under him; those again sounded their trumpets, and so downwards to the copyholders, &c. The court of Ward was a great bridle in those days. No younger brothers were to betake themselves to trade, but were churchmen, or retainers and servants to great men, rid good horses (now and then took a purse); and their blood, that was bred at the good tables of their masters, was upon every occasion freely let out in their quarrels. It was then too common among their masters to have Feuds with one another, and their servants, at market, or where they met, in that

pleton, where there is a sort of prodigy, an entrance passage with circular arches, in the Saxon style, which must probably be as old as the reign of Henry II. No other private house in England, as I conceive, can boast of such a monument of antiquity.

In the construction of farmhouses and cottages, there have been probably fewer changes than in large mansions. Cottages in England seem to have generally consisted of a single room without division of stories.

slashing age, did commonly bang one another's bucklers. Then an equerry, when he rode to town, was attended by eight or ten men in blue coats, with badges. The lords lived in their countries, like petty kings; had their castles and boroughs, and sent burgesses to the lower house; had gallows within their liberties, where they could try, condemn, hang, and draw; never went to London but in parliament time, or once a year to do their duty and homage to the king. The lords of the manors kept good houses in their countries, eat in their gothic halls at the high table, the folke at the side-tables. Every baron, or gentleman of state, kept great horses for a man at arms; lords had their armouries to furnish some hundreds of men. No alehouses or inns then, except upon great roads; when they had a mind to drink, they went to the friaries, and when they travelled, they had entertainment in the religious houses for three days, if required. The meeting of the gentry was not then in tippling houses, but in the fields and forests, with their hawks or hounds, bugle horns, &c."

We are now enabled to present the reader with a magnificent palace, built in the reign of Edward VI. and which, for its date, is esteemed the most regular building in the kingdom. This is Longleat, in Wiltshire, the seat of the marquis of Bath. Upon its site was originally a priory, which came into the possession of the Thynne family, in the reign of Henry VIII.; and the

present mansion was commenced by the first proprietor of that family, and completed by his successors under the direction of an Italian architect. It consists of three stories, and in front is two hundred and twenty feet long, the stories being of Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian architecture, adorned with rich pilasters, &c.;

on all sides of the building is a handsome balustrade, with statues, and from the roof rise several cupolas, &c. The apartments in this palace are numerous, large, and sumptuous; the great hall is two stories in height, and the library is two hundred and twenty feet in length. The gardens were originally embellished with fountains, cascades, and statues, and laid out in formal parterres; but these have been newly modelled. The park is very extensive and beautiful, and the whole domain within the plantation is estimated to comprise a circumference of fifteen miles; and with respect to magnitude, grandeur, and variety of decoration,

it has always been regarded as the pride of this part of the country. Among the furniture of the house is a great number of portraits of eminent persons in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and her successors.

In the brilliant reign of Elizabeth, the English nobles and princely proprietors vied more than ever with each other in the magnificence of their mansions. The principal deviations from houses erected in the two previous reigns was in the bay-windows, parapets, and porticos; and internally in the halls, galleries, state chambers, and staircases. Where brick or stone were deficient, the large country manor-houses were generally constructed of timber framework, with roofs carved in oak or chestnut. The mansions were, however, upon a more splendid and extensive scale under James and Charles I. than in the reign of Elizabeth—of these are, Hatfield, in Hertfordshire, the seat of the marquis of Salisbury, erected in 1611; and Audley End, Essex, the mansion of Lord Suffolk, built in 1616. A very stately mansion was also erected about this period, at Campden, in Gloucestershire, at an expense of twenty-nine thousand pounds; it was burnt during the civil wars, but when perfect, it occupied eight acres, was of the most splendid architecture, and had a large dome rising from the roof, which was illuminated nightly for the direction of travellers.

The deviations to which we allude, in these buildings, were produced by the introduction of