merchant Curwin's, at Salem, and others which it is not so certain were built before the confederation, still remain to attest the resources and taste of their proprietors. Nor were the furniture and other appointments of rich the house terminate at the floor of the attic, and the rafters lie upon them. The angle of the roof is 60°, making the base and sides equal. At the end of the wing, by the chimney, is a recess, which must have been intended as a place of concealment. The interior wall has the appearance of touching the chimney, like the wall at the northwest end. But the removal of a board discovers two closets which project beyond the lower part of the building. I learn from Mr. Smith that at least three other stone houses were built at the first settlement of Guilford. 6 VOL. II. Whitefield was a man of good property; but it may be doubted whether his house is a specimen of the best that were erected at an early period. When Gorton and his company were conducted to Boston, in 1643, "the Governor [Winthrop] caused the prisoners to be brought before him in his hall, where was a great assembly." (Winthrop, II. 142.) Gov. Coddington's house in Newport, believed to have been built about the year 1650, was standing till 1835. From a sketch made of it in that year, a photographic representation was taken, of which men's convenient dwellings deficient in a corresponding luxury. To the marriage settlement of John Winthrop the elder, when he wedded a third time, there is attached an inventory of the property of his bride, which indicates a somewhat sumptuous domestic establishment. At Governor Eaton's death, when money was worth three times Coddington's House at Newport. But houses of such pretension as these belonged only to the richer sort. The dwellings of the generality of the people were not of materials sufficiently durable to admit of their being known at this day through actual specimens. At the very earliest period, it was necessary for the great body of the emigrants to be content with any sort of shelter from the weather. After a while, when saw-mills furnished timber and boards, and shipments of salable articles brought plenty of iron from abroad, the villages began to consist of frame-houses. In the interval between these two periods, the settlers, it is probable, made themselves comfortable as much as now, his wearing-apparel was inventoried at fifty pounds sterling, and his plate at a hundred and fifty pounds; and "Turkey carpet," "tapestry coverings," and "cushions of Turkey work," were among the articles of show which helped him to maintain "a port in some measure answerable to his place." 1 The dress of the generality of the people must needs have been plain.1 They could have had no superfluity of offerings to lay on the altar of the pride of Dress. life. But such laws as have been referred to, aimed in almost the earliest times against "the ordinary wearing of silver, gold, and silk laces," and against the wearing at all of "embroidered and needle-work caps," "gold and silver girdles," "immoderate great sleeves," and "slashed apparel," 2 point unequivocally to one form sanna.' (Conn. Rec., I. 574, 575.) Such household luxury, however, must have been far enough from being common, or from being known to many who were esteemed decent liv ers, at least, near to the beginning of things. Most articles of table furniture were made of pewter. Governor Bradford left, of that material, fourteen dishes, thirteen platters, three large and two small plates, a candlestick, and a bottle. He had "four large silver spoons," and nine of smaller size. Peter Palfrey, one of the three "honest and prudent men who were with Conant at Salem in 1627, and afterwards a Deputy in the General Court and otherwise employed by the public, was a man of comfortable substance, though not of the quality of the time. In his testamentary distribution of his property, in 1662, he gave to his daughter Mary, besides a bequest in money, "two pewter platters and likewise an iron pot," a little fact which may indicate the value then set upon serviceable domestic utensils; unless it were that to these homely articles—the former of which were inscribed with the letters "M. P." was attached in the testator's mind some adventitious value, due to some special association of interesting domestic experience. In the early inventories of furniture no forks appear. They were hardly known in England before 1650. As a fact correlative to this, there was a great affluence of napkins. E. Howes wrote to Winthrop, in 1633, that he had sent him a case, containing "an Irish skeyne or knife," two or three delicate tools, "and a fork." (Mass. Hist. Coll., XXIX. 255.) Silver forks scarcely appeared in Boston till after the war of 1812, except on the tables of two or three gentlemen who had been in the diplomatic service of the country. As to the personal effects of the Plymouth people, we have plenty of information in palpable shape, could we only be sure of its authenticity. But the articles of household gear purporting to have come over in the Mayflower alone are so numerous, that one doubts whether they would not have filled the moderate capacity of that highly-fated vessel,cabin, hold, steerage, forecastle, and deck, out leaving the sparest accommodation for any of those venerable forms that have made her winter voyage so famous. with |