Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/303

 EARLSHALL 287 FOURTH PERIOD On the first floor, entering from the wheel stair, is the hall, 37 feet 6 inches long by 18 feet 6 inches wide. A sketch of this room (Fig. 744) is given, showing its fine fireplace and grate, with plaster pendant from the ceiling. On the fireplace lintel are the Bruce and Leslie arms, with the initials of Alexander Bruce and his wife, Elizabeth Leslie. The hall has been divided with a screen where shown by dotted lines on the plan (Fig. 74-1). A garde-robe and a small anteroom in the wing enter off the westmost division. At the east end of the hall is a private room, and beyond this, in the round tower, there is another apartment, probably a bedroom. Between the two, in the thickness of the wall, a turret stair leads to an entresol above. On the upper floor is the painted gallery or withdrawing-room, occupying the whole length of the house, and measuring 50 feet 6 inches long by 18 feet 6 inches wide, and about 13 feet high. The walls and ceiling of this room are most elaborately decorated in black and white. Some idea of the style of decoration will be obtained from Fig. 745. A painted frieze, consisting of pilasters with flat arches, runs along the top of the wall (being very much the same idea as is carried out in plaster-work at Winton House), and the spaces between are filled in with maxims in good Roman letters. Of these only a few are now legible, out of some twenty or thirty which once existed. From the scraps which can be made out here and there, they consisted of moral apophthegms such as : TRY AND THEN GIVE LIBERALYE TRVST - BETTER GVDE TO NEIDFVL FOLKE ASSVRANCE DENYE NANE OF EOT TRUS NOT HEM AL. FOR - LITTLE OR YE TRY FOR FEAR HOV KNAVEST HE OF - REPENTANCE. IRIN - THIS LYF QVHA T. CHAVNCE MAY HE BEFALL. Above this frieze, and without the intervention of anything like a cornice, the flat-arched ceiling formed of deal boards begins. It is carried up into the roof, and formed on the rafters and ties. Its decora- tion consists of alternate rows of round and square panels running from end to end of the hall, and separated from each other by ornamented spaces. The round panels contain the arms, with the mottoes of many Scottish families, as well as figures of Classical and Scriptural fame. The square compartments contain representations of animals, such as the Lion, Chameleon, Sphinx, and Hydra ; one is labelled " SVYN BAIB," and represents a sow and her pig. The names of all the subjects are marked in Roman letters. The mantelpiece is also decorated with painted scroll ornaments. Above it, and projecting in a very irregular way into the arcaded frieze, is a moulded panel containing the Bruce and Meldrum