Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/38

 Hijiory of Domejlic Manners CHAPTER II. IN-DOOR LIFE AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS. THE HALL AND ITS HOS- PITALITY. THE SAXON MEAL. PROVISIONS AND COOKERY. AFTER- DINNER OCCUPATIONS. DRUNKEN BRAWLS. THE introdu6tory obfervations in the preceding chapter will be ful^icient to lliow that the mode of life, the veffels and utenfils, and even the rcfidences of the Anglo-Saxons, were a mixture of thofe they derived from their own forefathers with thofe which they borrowed from the Romans, whom they found eftablifhed in Britain. It is in- terefting to us to know that we have retained the ordinary forms of pitchers and balins, and, to a certain degree, of drinking velTels, which exifted fo many centuries ago among our ancellors before they eftablilhed themfelves in this illand. The beautiful forms which had been brought from the claflic fouth were not able to fuperlede national habit. Our modern houfes derive more of their form and arrangement from thofe of our Saxon forefathers than from any other fource. We have feen that the original Saxon arrangement of a houfe was preferved by that people to the laft ; but it does not follow that they did not fometimes adopt the Roman houfes they found flanding, although they feem never to have imitated them. I believe Bulwer's defcription of the Saxonifed Roman houfe inha- bited by Hilda, to be founded in truth. Roman villas, when uncovered at the prefent day, are fometimes found to have undergone alterations which can only be explained by fuppofing that they were made when later pofTeflbrs adapted them to Saxon manners. Such alterations appear to me to be vifible in the villa at Hadftock, in Effex, opened by the late lord Braybrooke ; in one place the outer wall feems to have been broken through to make a new entrance, and a road of tiles, which was fuppofed to have been the bottom of a water courfe, was more probably the paved path- way