more anxious to invigorate their bodies by a generous diet than to
dwell in well furnished houses, or to find comfort in cleanliness and
elegance.[653] The German cities, however, had acquired with liberty the
spirit of improvement and industry. From the time that Henry V. admitted
their artisans to the privileges of free burghers they became more and
more prosperous;[654] while the steadiness and frugality of the German
character compensated for some disadvantages arising out of their inland
situation. Spire, Nuremberg, Ratisbon, and Augsburg were not indeed like
the rich markets of London and Bruges, nor could their burghers rival
the princely merchants of Italy; but they enjoyed the blessings of
competence diffused over a large class of industrious freemen, and in
the fifteenth century one of the politest Italians could extol their
splendid and well furnished dwellings, their rich apparel, their easy
and affluent mode of living, the security of their rights and just
equality of their laws.[655]

[Sidenote: Civil architecture.]

No chapter in the history of national manners would illustrate so well,
if duly executed, the progress of social life as that dedicated to
domestic architecture. The fashions of dress and of amusements are
generally capricious and irreducible to rule; but every change in the
dwellings of mankind, from the rudest wooden cabin to the stately
mansion, has been dictated by some principle of convenience, neatness,
comfort, or magnificence. Yet this most interesting field of research
has been less beaten by our antiquaries than others comparatively
barren. I do not pretend to a complete knowledge of what has been
written by these learned inquirers; but I can only name one book in
which the civil architecture of our ancestors has been sketched, loosely
indeed, but with a superior hand, and another in which it is partially
noticed. I mean by the first a chapter in the Appendix to Dr. Whitaker's
History of Whalley; and by the second Mr. King's Essays on Ancient
Castles in the Archaeologia.[656] Of these I shall make free use in the
following paragraphs.

The most ancient buildings which we can trace in this island, after the
departure of the Romans, were circular towers of no great size, whereof
many remain in Scotland, erected either on a natural eminence or on an
artificial mound of earth. Such are Conisborough Castle in Yorkshire and
Castleton in Derbyshire, built perhaps, according to Mr. King,