The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 | Page 9

is occupied by a spacious hearth, around which gathered the
friends and followers of the noble house; and the fire-utensils which
still remain, and which seem destined for the consumption of entire
forests, intimate that the household gods which presided here dealt in
no stinted or penurious economy. There was scarcely need of flue or
chimney, for the smoke curling up among the interlacing rafters of the
roof, might long gather in its ample cavity without threatening those
below with serious inconvenience. It is curious to observe that when at
length so obvious a contrivance as the chimney grew into more general
use, its introduction was opposed by much the same sort of arguments
as have in other ages resisted the encroachments of change and novelty.
A moralist of the times has left us his recorded opinion, that nothing
but agues and catarrhs had followed the abandonment of that old and
genial practice which planted the fire in the middle of the room and left
the smoke to spread its sable canopy aloft. Another peculiarity in this
picture of ancient manners was the slightly-raised platform called the
daïs, at the farther extremity of the hall, which reminds us of the
distinction that was preserved even in the hours of convivial relaxation,
between the family of the lord and its dependents. Nor was this
distinction in general one of place alone: in most of the wealthy and
noble houses of the period, it portended a corresponding distinction in
the quality of the food. Hence in the homely times in which Ben Jonson
has apostrophized Penshurst, it is mentioned as an honorable instance

of the hospitality of its owner, that
----'there each guest might eat, Without his fear, and of the lord's own
meat; Where the same beer, board, and self-same wine, That is his
lordship's, shall be also mine.'
'A strange topic of praise,' remarks Gifford, 'to those who are
unacquainted with the practice of those times; but in fact the liberal
mode of hospitality here recorded was almost peculiar to this noble
person. The great dined at long tables, (they had no other in their vast
halls,) and permitted many guests to sit down with them; but the
gradations of rank and fortune were rigidly maintained, and the dishes
grew visibly coarser as they receded from the head of the table.' To sit
below the salt, is a phrase with which the romances of Scott have made
us familiar, and which originated, it seems, in the custom of placing a
large salt-cellar near the middle of the table, not more for convenience
than with reference to the distribution of the guests.
The same spirit which presided over the appointments of this stately
hall extended itself to the other apartments and remoter details of the
household. Every where there is the same reference to the power and
even the supervision of the lord, manifested in the long suites of rooms
which open upon each other, (the hall just mentioned is commanded by
a small window opening from a superior and adjacent apartment,) as if
to give the master at one glance a view of the number and a knowledge
of the pursuits of the inmates. The ideas of the architects of that age
seem to have been limited in their object, to realizing an image of the
great feudal principle of preëminence and protection on the one side,
submissiveness and reliance on the other. Hence designs and
arrangements so little consistent with the privacy and personal
independence which we regard at present as indispensable to every
scheme of domestic accommodation. But these artists were not limited
alone by a defective conception of the objects of their art; they were
also embarrassed in its execution by the unequal manner in which the
different branches of it had been cultivated and improved. It is
doubtless a remark which will admit of very general application, that
the arts which may be made subservient to embellishment and

magnificence, have always far outstripped those which only conduce to
comfort and convenience. The savage paints his body with gorgeous
colors, who wants a blanket to protect him from the cold; and nations
have heaped up pyramids to enhance their sense of importance, who
have dwelt contentedly in dens and caves of the earth. Something of the
same incongruity may be remarked at Penshurst, and other English
mansions of the same age and order; where we sometimes ascend to
galleries of inestimable paintings over steps roughly hewn with the axe,
and look upon ceilings of the most exquisite and elaborate carving
suspended over floors which have never had the benefit of the joiner's
plane.
In the tastes, too, and personal habits of that elder period, contrasts of a
not less striking nature might be easily pointed out. We may doubt,