THE ARTS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 17 it had been in past ages; the balance of power, religious animosity, or personal ambition, the ruling motives. In times so turbulent as those, the arts of peace could scarcely thrive; and consequently we find the social and industrial features of that age wholly unpromising. Arts in the During the Middle Ages, nearly all knowledge of the arts of antiquity had perished in the gulf which swallowed up so much of the virtue and manly sentiment, and political and social rights of the people, and Feudalism debased all labor, physical and intellectual, and every Art but that of carnage. The feeble lamp of learning burned dimly, and only in the cloister of the monk. At length the spirit of Chivalry arose to stay the hand of oppression, to succor the weak, cultivate the principles of truth, honor, justice, and generosity, and to plant the wide moral waste with the sentiments of love and of poetry. In process of time, this institution itself degenerated into one of mere pageantry and phantasm. During the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries, the principal arts in requisition were those of the armorer, the jeweler, the beed-maker, and the costumer. They fabricated corslets and suits of embroidered silk and cloth of gold, or jeweled and enamelled insignia for the mailed knight, gay trappings of lace and silver for his steed, and chaplets, rosaries, gold and silver clasps, and images of the Virgin for the hand of his lady-love. From the fascinating spectacle of the Tournament, where gallant knights, who could neither read nor write, received the meed of valor from the hands of high-born ladies, whose only knowledge was the management of their palfreys or their hawks, how to play the spinet. or the lute, make a little needlework or confectionary, the boorish and degraded populace retired to their wretched dwellings to rest on floors. of clay, with billets of wood for their pillows. About this time, indeed, we read of the rich laces, splendid brocades, and cloth of gold, the elegant products of the silk looms of Venice; of the linen fabrics of Brescia, the woolen manufactures of Padua, and the glass-houses of Murano, all dependencies of the "City on a Hundred Isles." These unrivaled manufactures, as well as the riches of Egypt, Syria, and the East, her enterprising traders transported to the most distant parts of Europe, and built up in their sea-girt refuge from oppression, amid the shallow waters of the Lagunes, the most splendid maritime, commercial, and manufacturing power of the Middle Ages. Her only rivals in opulence, art, and naval supremacy, were the cities of Genoa, Pisa, and Florence, which, with Venice, rose to the height of their influence about the middle of the Fourteenth century. The maritime genius of the former nurtured the adventurous spirit of Columbus, and the liberality of the merchant princes of the latter fostered the new born arts and learning of Europe. But when at length the knowledge of the silk, plate-glass, woolen and other manufactures slowly found their way into Western Europe, as they had been slowly introduced into Italy, by the Greeks and Saracens from the East, they long continued, as in their former seats, to minister chiefly to the magnificence of courts and of the nobility, while the humbler mauufactures and the mechanic arts had scarcely an existence. The condition of the common people, and even of the wealthy classes, was therefore but tardily improved during the slow growth of knowledge and of industry. And when Manufactures began to revive under more favorable auspices, the injurious effects of monopolies, growing out of the abuse of royal prerogative, by limiting its profits to a favored few, repressed all competition and all stimulus to improvement. The condition of the English people, as respects their civilization and social comfort in the century which includes the very early history of the American colonies, may be inferred from a few facts, which supply the place of correct statistics. During the comparatively tranquil reign of Elizabeth, England had rapidly progressed in wealth and power; and as history too commonly deals only with the intrigues of courts and cabinets, and the actions of illustrious persons, it might be inferred, from the splendor of her court and nobility, that the common people of England were in a condition of comparative comfort. In mere outward display, particularly of dress, upholstery, and retinue, those days exceeded our own; but in point of comfort, even the nobility and gentry of the Sixteenth century, scarcely equalled the humblest peasantry or mechanics of England or the United States at this time; while the latter classes were for the most part worse fed, clothed, and lodged than any class at present known among us. English Sixteenth Century. In the beginning of the Sixteenth century, the houses of the common people were, many of them, built of mud and wood, thatched with straw, and consisted of one room without division of stories. comfort in The floor was the bare earth or clay covered with rushes or straw, "under which," says Erasmus, "lay every thing that is nauseous." Chimneys were almost unknown, even in the houses of the gentry; and late in the century, even in the larger towns, but few houses contained a chimney. The fire was kindled against a hob of clay called the rere dosse, in the back or centre of the room, which was filled with smoke from wood-the only fuel used-that found its way out by an opening or lantern in the roof. In this apartment the family dined and dressed their meals; and in farm houses the oxen often lived under the same roof. Their utensils were mostly of wood; glass was scarce, and pottery wholly unknown. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, no fire ENGLISH COMFORT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 19 was allowed in the University of Oxford. Glass windows, carpets, chairs, and looking-glasses, were still less common than chimneys; and forks were not known until the time of James I. Glass windows in Elizabeth's reign, were movable furniture in the houses of the nobility, and the dining halls of the gentry were covered with rushes or straw. The bedding consisted of straw pallets or rough mats covered only by a sheet and coarse coverlet, with a good round log instead of a bolster or pillow. An old annalist says: "As for servants, if they had any sheet above them it was well; for seldom had they any under their bodies to keep them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet, and rased their hardened hides." A mattress or flock-bed and sack of chaff for a pillow, were considered evidences of prosperity in one who had been seven years married, who considered himself "as well lodged as the lord of the town." Skipton Castle, one of the most splendid mansions of the North, had but seven beds, and none of the chambers had chairs, glasses, or carpets. Even the Baronial household of Northum berland, in the beginning of the century, employed but two cooks for a retinue of two hundred persons, including seventy strangers daily counted upon; had no sheets; and the table linen, often extremely costly, was washed about once a month. Forty shillings was the yearly allowance for the washing of the household. The earl had three country seats, with furniture for but one, and carried all with him when he removed, one cart sufficing for all the kitchen utensils, cooks' beds, etc. The food of artificers and laborers in Henry the Eighth's reign, was "horsecorn, beans, peason, oats, tares, and lentils." Barley bread was the usual food of the poorer classes in 1626, and white bread was but little used by them in 1689. Even as late as 1725, when an improved agriculture had made wheat bread common in the southern counties, in Cumberland, it is said, none but a rich family used a peck of wheat in a year, and that at Christmas. A wheaten loaf was only found after much search in the shops of Carlisle. Servants, and the very poor, ate dry bran bread, sometimes mixed with rye meal. Yet the English peasantry were better fed than the French at that period, who ate apples, water and rye meal. Corn was mostly ground at home by the querne or hand-mill, in the time of Elizabeth. Holland at the time supplied London with vegetables, and a century later a large part of England was an unproductive waste. In the early reign of Henry VIII., it has been said, not a cabbage, carrot, turnip, or other edible root grew in England. Traveling was most tedious and perilous, as well on account of the wretched condition of the roads, as the prevalence of moss-troopers and highwaymen, who as late as the times of Charles II. were hunted in some counties with blood-hounds. In the reign of Henry VIII., it is said, 70,000 thieves were hanged in England. Until the middle of the Sixteenth century nearly all traveling was on horseback, and goods were transported on pack-horses, the foremost wearing a bell to warn travelers to turn out to let them pass, such was the narrowness of the way. Coaches did not become general until the time of Elizabeth, or later, when they were without springs and very clumsy. The queen in her old age is said to have reluctantly used so effeminate a conveyance, which it was a disgrace for a young man to be seen to use; and she is said also to have declined a breakfast at Cambridge because she had twelve miles to travel before she slept! Turnpikes were established by Act of Parliament in the time of Charles the Second, but the gates were pulled down by a mob. In 1703, public coaches were advertised to perform the whole journey from London to York in four days! And in 1760, a coach left Edinburgh for London once a month, and occupied a month in the journey. Owing to the difficulties of transportation, many articles were nearly worthless a few miles from any market. Coals, in the time of Henry VIII., were worth but 12d. per chaldron at Newcastle, and four shillings in London. They became so dear in 1643, that many perished for want of fuel, which the tardy means of supply could not prevent. A pamphlet of that period has the imprint— "Printed in the year That sea coal was exceeding dear." Pins were introduced from France in 1543, previous to which, royal ladies used instead ribbons, clasps, and skewers of brass, silver, gold, ivory, bone, or wood. They were first made in England in 1626. Umbrellas, though of great antiquity, were not known in England until 1768, and their first use excited the jeers of the vulgar. London and Westminster were first lighted by order of Parliament in 1743, and coal gas was first used for that purpose in 1814. Yet at that late day the measure was opposed by so enlightened a person as Lord Brougham. But our theme does not permit us to enlarge upon this topic. Every department of the public, private, and social economy of the period, in its intellectual, moral, or industrial aspects, would furnish ample evidence of the dwarfish condition of the kingdom, compared with its present august stature in all the arts of civilized life. Those who would derive a most instructive lesson from history, would do well to consult the third chapter of Macaulay's History of England, and compare the state of England, as depicted by him, just previous to the Revolution of 1688, when the population of the kingdom was between five and six millions, with that of Great Britain as she exists at this day. The progress made since the beginning of the century had been comparatively small; and the examination may better enable the reader to appre MINING AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 21 ciate the evidences of activity, and of slow but steady progress made amidst poverty, hardship, and savage hostility, in our own country, even previous to the time when national independence and public spirit, combined with a suddenly progressive character in the age, gave our industry a permanent impulse. The period of our colonization was one of much talent and great promise, but the "car of improvement" was many years in getting under way. Macaulay assures us that a large part of the country beyond Trent was, down to the eighteenth century, in a state of barbarism! That in 1685, the value of the produce of the soil far exceeded the value of all the other fruits of human industry. Yet the wheat crop was estimated at less than two millions of quarters. But the mineral wealth of the kingdom was still less developed. Tin had been an article of export for over two thousand years, and was still one of the most valuable of native minerals. Its product was about sixteen hundred tons. In 1856, it was reported at eight thousand seven hundred and forty-seven tons. The copper mines, he says, then lay wholly neglected, and were not reckoned in the value of land; but Cornwall and Wales, at the time he wrote, produced fifteen thousand tons annually, worth near a million and a half sterling, or twice the annual value of the produce of all English mines in the Seventeenth century. In 1854, Great Britain produced twenty-three thousand and seventy-three tons of copper, worth over two and a quarter millions of pounds sterling.1 Beds of rock salt were discovered after the Restoration, but not worked, and the salt made in rude brine pits was nauseous and unwholesome. A great part of the iron used at the close of Charles the Second's reign was imported, and the whole quantity cast annually did not exceed ten thousand tons. In 1740, England and Wales, from fifty-nine furnaces, produced only seventeen thousand three hundred and fifty-six tons; and in 1750, twenty-two thousand tons. In 1856, the product of pig-iron was officially stated to be three millions of tons." The wages of farm laborers, at the same period, did not exceed ordinarily four shillings a week, but ranged as high as six or seven in summer. And for workmen in woolens, the staple manufacture of England, six shillings were considered fair wages. These prices, it is evident, were not more than one half the rates paid at present; while most articles of consumption cost more than half their present prices. Although as early as 1351, free labor had been recognized in place of villeinage by the legislature, the statute book continued to be loaded with iniquitous laws, regulating the price of labor, down to the time of Elizabeth, when the law of supply and demand was seen to be a better regulator of wages (2) Ibid. (1) Annals of British Legislation, vol. ii. |