but the
amusement was the best available, and the decrees were left unobserved.
Edward starts on his war to France, and his knights, following his
example, take their falconers and their hounds along with them, as
though they were going to a hunt.[435] Never was felt to a greater
degree what Rabelais terms "the scorn of fortuitous things." Times have
changed, and until we go back to a similar state of affairs, which is
not impossible, we come into the world with ideas of peace and order,
and of a life likely to be a long one. We are indignant if it is
threatened, very sad when the end draws near; with more lasting
happinesses we smile less often. Froissart paints in radiant colours,
and the subject of his pictures is the France of the Hundred Years' War.
The "merry England" of the "Cursor Mundi" and after is the England of
the great plagues, and of the rising of the peasants, which had two
kings assassinated out of four. It is also the England whose Madonnas
smile.

In architecture the English favour the development of that kind of
special Gothic of which they are the inventors, the Perpendicular, a
rich and well-ordered style, terrestrial, practical, pleasant to look
upon. No one did more to secure it a lasting fame than the Chancellor of
Edward III. and of Richard II., William of Wykeham, bishop of
Winchester, the restorer of Windsor, founder of New College at Oxford,
the greatest builder of the century.[436] The walls and vaulted roofs of
chapels are thick inlaid with ornaments; broad windows let in different
coloured lights through their stained-glass panes; golden-haired angels
start from the cornices; architecture smiles too, and its smile, like
that of the Madonnas, is half religious and half mundane.

Less care is taken to raise strong houses than formerly; among the
numerous castles with which the land bristles may be seen, in the
distant valley where the ancient town of St. David's lies screened, a
bishop's palace that would have suited neither William de Longchamp nor
Hugh de Puiset, a magnificent dwelling, without towers of defence, or
moats, or drawbridges, an exceptional dwelling, built as though the
inhabitants were already secure of the morrow.[437]

The outside is less rude, and the inside is adorned and enriched; life
becomes more private than it used to be; existence less patriarchal and
more refined; those who still cling to old customs complain that the
rich man dines in a chamber with a chimney