(_For the Mirror_.)

Hollingshed, who was contemporary with Queen Elizabeth, informs us,
"there were very few chimneys (in England in his time) even in the capital
towns; the fire was laid to the wall, and the smoke issued out at the
roof, or door, or window. The houses were wattled, and plastered over
with clay, and all the furniture and utensils were of wood. The people
slept on straw pallets, with a log of wood for a pillow."

Cambrensis, Bishop of St. David's, says, "It was the common vice of the
English, from their first settlement in Britain, to expose their children
and relations to sale;" and it also appears, "that the wife of Earl
Godwin, who was sister to Canute, the Danish King of England, made great
gain by the trade she made of buying up English youths and maids to sell
to Denmark."

Lord Bacon in his Apophthegms, says, "Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester,
in a famine, sold all the rich vessels and ornaments of the church, to
relieve the poor with bread; and said, 'There was no reason that the dead
temples of God should be sumptuously furnished, and the living temples
suffer penury.'" Ingulphus tells us, "For want of parchment to draw the
deeds upon, great estates were frequently conveyed from one family to
another, only by the ceremony of a turf and a stone, delivered before
witnesses, and without any written agreement." Andrews, in his History of
Great Britain, says, "In France, A.D. 1147, the great vassals emulated
and even surpassed the sovereign in pomp and cost of living." As an
instance of the wild liberality of the age, we are informed, that Henry
the "munificent" Count of Champagne, being applied to by a poor gentleman
for a portion to enable him to marry his two daughters: his steward
remonstrated to him, "that he had given away every thing," "thou _liest_,"
said Henry, "I have _thee_ left;" so he delivered over the steward to the
petitioner, who put him into confinement until he gave him 500 livres, a
handsome sum in those days.

Bede tells us, "Archbishop Theodore, when (in the seventh century) he
gave lectures on medicine at Canterbury, remonstrated against bleeding on
the 4th day of the moon, since at that period (he said) the light of the
planet and the tides of the ocean were on the increase." Yet Theodore was,
for his era, deeply learned.

William of Malmsbury says, "Very highly finished works in gold and silver,
were the produce even of our darkest ages. The monks were the best
art