eneral use. Carpets superseded the
filthy flooring of rushes. The loftier houses of the wealthier
merchants, their parapeted fronts and costly wainscoting, their cumbrous
but elaborate beds, their carved staircases, their quaintly-figured
gables, not only contrasted with the squalor which had till then
characterized English towns, but marked the rise of a new middle class
which was to play its part in later history.

[Sidenote: Architectural change.]

A transformation of an even more striking kind marked the extinction of
the feudal character of the noblesse. Gloomy walls and serried
battlements disappeared from the dwellings of the gentry. The strength
of the mediaeval fortress gave way to the pomp and grace of the
Elizabethan Hall. Knole, Longleat, Burleigh and Hatfield, Hardwick and
Audley End, are familiar instances of a social as well as an
architectural change which covered England with buildings where the
thought of defence was abandoned for that of domestic comfort and
refinement. We still gaze with pleasure on their picturesque line of
gables, their fretted fronts, their gilded turrets and fanciful vanes,
their castellated gateways, the jutting oriels from which the great
noble looked down on his new Italian garden, on its stately terraces and
broad flights of steps, its vases and fountains, its quaint mazes, its
formal walks, its lines of yews cut into grotesque shapes in hopeless
rivalry of the cypress avenues of the South. Nor was the change less
within than without. The life of the Middle Ages concentrated itself in
the vast castle hall, where the baron looked from his upper dais on the
retainers who gathered at his board. But the great households were fast
breaking up; and the whole feudal economy disappeared when the lord of
the household withdrew with his family into his "parlour" or
"withdrawing-room" and left the hall to his dependants. The Italian
refinement of life which told on pleasance and garden told on the
remodelling of the house within, raised the principal apartments to an
upper floor--a change to which we owe the grand staircases of the
time--surrounded the quiet courts by long "galleries of the presence,"
crowned the rude hearth with huge chimney-pieces adorned with fauns and
cupids, with quaintly-interlaced monograms and fantastic arabesques,
hung tapestries on the walls, and crowded each chamber with
quaintly-carved chairs and costly cabinets. The prodigal use of glass
became a marked f