nhoped-for joy to the
hours of night.

The second step in advance was the ladies' bower, a room or suite of
rooms set apart for the ladies of the house and their women. For the
first time, as soon as this room was added, the women could follow their
own vocations of embroidery, spinning, and needlework of all kinds,
apart from the rough and noisy talk of the men.

The main features, therefore, of every great house, whether in town or
country, from the seventh to the twelfth century, were the hall, the
solar built over the kitchen and buttery, and the ladies' bower.

There was also the garden. In all times the English have been fond of
gardens. Bacon thought it not beneath his dignity to order the
arrangement of a garden. Long before Bacon, a writer of the twelfth
century describes a garden as it should be. "It should be adorned on
this side with roses, lilies, and the marigold; on that side with
parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood, coriander, sage, savery, hyssop,
mint, vine, dettany, pellitory, lettuce, cresses, and the peony. Let
there be beds enriched with onions, leeks, garlic, melons, and
scallions. The garden is also enriched by the cucumber, the soporiferous
poppy, and the daffodil, and the acanthus. Nor let pot herbs be wanting,
as beet-root, sorrel, and mallow. It is useful also to the gardener to
have anise, mustard, and wormwood.... A noble garden will give you
medlars, quinces, the pear main, peaches, pears of St. Regle,
pomegranates, citrons, oranges, almonds, dates, and figs." The latter
fruits were perhaps attempted, but one doubts their arriving at
ripeness. Perhaps the writer sets down what he hoped would be some
day achieved.

The indoor amusements of the time were very much like our own. We have a
little music in the evening; so did our forefathers. We sometimes have a
little dancing; so did they, but the dancing was done for them. We go to
the theatres to see the mime; in their days the mime made his theatre in
the great man's hall. He played the fiddle and the harp; he sang songs,
he brought his daughter, who walked on her hands and executed
astonishing capers; the gleeman, minstrel, or jongleur was already as
disreputable as when we find him later on with his _ribauderie_. Again,
we play chess; so did our ancestors. We gamble with dice; so did they.
We feast and drink together; so did they. We pass the time in talk; so
did they. In a word, as Alphonse Karr put it, the more we change, the
more