where were found products altogether unknown to the old European Continent. To all the residents of the island who heard either from near report or distant rumour of the strange old lands beyond the deep waters, a mental impulse was given, and men's ideas and thoughts expanded, and the grandeur of the achievements developed itself in the poetry, the romance, in the very follies of the time: and while these rough navigators were plunging into the silence and solitude of the vast and distant waters, carrying the crude wonders of barbaric civilization to the startled Indians of the forests of America, with all the cruelties peculiar to the age, the commercial trader and navigator was pouring into England wealth more valuable than gold. Thought was elicited; the inventive powers and prowess of man was excited ; England, more than ever was placing herself upon a friendly footing with the merchants of the world; while Spain, with transcendant folly, supposed that by wealth brought from the Americas she could make herself great without industry or labour,-training up to curse her soil, through all future years, a horde of proud, glittering idiotic grandees; and supposed that persecution alone could make a nation feared. England pursued the steadier, the surer, the only sure path: she hailed rapturously to her coasts the refugees of religion and freedom; she bade the streamer fly to mark her approach to other climes with the friendly vessel of the merchant; sails gleamed along her coasts, her havens were crowded, foreigners thronged her exchanges, towns began to supersede in importance the cities of the previous ages,and thus the character of the age was won, and all succeeding times have reverted with rapture to the "GOLDEN DAYS OF QUEEN BESS." CHAPTER VIII. DOMESTIC LIFE IN THE GOOD OLD TIMES. OLD HOUSES.—The fancy creeps and lingers about those places where domestic scenes and usages have held their sway, and where the memory of them still seems to impart a spell or fear, and awe, and interest, to the old timber wainscoatings, to the arras and tapestry, and to the fearful and ghostly old furniture of the mansion. It was principally during the reign of Elizabeth that a great change passed over the domestic architecture of the land, amidst all our deprecation of the tyranny of the Tudors, and their bold, and uncompromising, and frequently remorseless policy, how a glance at the old houses of this period, as compared with the preceding domestic buildings, heightens our opinion of the value of their dynasty. The structures of the early ages are all illustrative of a period of force-perhaps the true domestic building, that is, the home-the place of the family-the rooms consecrated to the smiles and endearments of love and affection, were unknown until the reign of Elizabeth; the castles, the strong fortified mansions of this age, instead of being merely the abodes of strength and munitions for war, bore traces of magnificence and convenience. But, who does not love to picture to his imagination, or, perhaps, to walk through, the chambers of old Elizabethian mansions, the dwellings of romance; perhaps stained with some terrible old legendary tale; with their large fire-places, their deep oriel windows, their long halls; such buildings were generally quadrangular: galleries long and echoing extended round the building, and here were suspended the antlered horns of the stag, the pendent roses, paintings and family portraits, and heraldic escutcheons; at the corner of the buildings stood the lanterned turrets, and high over all, in the centre of the building, hung the bells and the clock with its chimes: now, too, it became customary to ornament the ceiling with florid Gothic work! the windows were decorated with flowing and varied tracery, and over the whole interior of the greater rooms, there was spread the ornaments of this grotesque style of romantic architecture. The ornamental style of architecture never finds its way to nations, especially to the houses of the people, until they have learned to dwell in safety; this was the case with the Tudor times. The growth of commerce diffused wealth over the whole of the nation; and at the same time the stable and settled government gave that repose and durability without which men do not build, except for the purposes of religion and war. During the reign of Henry VIII. and Mary, the smaller mansion houses of the country gentry were little better than timber cottages, thatched and covered on the outside with the coarsest clay; but now a change was visible, and those buildings rose, so admirably described by Gray : "In Britain's isle, no matter where, To raise the ceiling's fretted height, Full oft within the spacious walls, |