ot brought hither out of the
east countries, whereby the rooms are not a little commended, made warm,
and much more close than otherwise they would be. As for stoves, we have
not hitherto used them greatly, yet do they now begin to be made in divers
houses of the gentry and wealthy citizens, who build them not to work and
feed in, as in Germany and elsewhere, but now and then to sweat in, as
occasion and need shall require it.

This also hath been common in England, contrary to the customs of all
other nations, and yet to be seen (for example, in most streets of
London), that many of our greatest houses have outwardly been very simple
and plain to sight, which inwardly have been able to receive a duke with
his whole train, and lodge them at their ease. Hereby, moreover, it is
come to pass that the fronts of our streets have not been so uniform and
orderly builded as those of foreign cities, where (to say truth) the outer
side of their mansions and dwellings have oft more cost bestowed upon them
than all the rest of the house, which are often very simple and uneasy
within, as experience doth confirm. Of old time, our country houses,
instead of glass, did use much lattice, and that made either of wicker or
fine rifts of oak in checkerwise. I read also that some of the better
sort, in and before the times of the Saxons (who notwithstanding used some
glass also since the time of Benedict Biscop, the monk that brought the
feat of glazing first into this land), did make panels of horn instead of
glass, and fix them in wooden calmes. But as horn in windows is now quite
laid down in every place, so our lattices are also grown into less use,
because glass is come to be so plentiful, and within a very little so good
cheap, if not better than the other. I find obscure mention of the
specular stone also to have been found and applied to this use in England,
but in such doubtful sort as I dare not affirm it for certain.
Nevertheless certain it is that antiquity used it before glass was known,
under the name of _selenites_. And how glass was first found I care not
greatly to remember, even at this present, although it be directly beside
my purposed matter. In Syria Phenices, which bordereth upon Jewry, and
near to the foot of Mount Carmel, there is a moor or marsh whereout riseth
a brook called sometime Belus, and falleth into the sea near to Ptolemais.
This river was fondly ascribed unto Baal, and also honoured under that
name by the