to be bestridden at any moment by seven hundred men in armour, who are servants to the great man for whom the house has recently been built. These fighting horsemen have their lodgings, which look like a row of strong barracks, near to the stables; and they eat and drink every day, and are clothed, at the cost of their lordly master.

We have not done yet with the stables of this great house. Quite apart from the seven hundred stalled stables, is another building in which, very delicately cared for, are a number of beautiful horses, which are intended for the sole use of the master himself. They have been bought without regard to their cost, and they are tended with extreme care by a little company of grooms and horse-boys, whose only employment is to keep this valuable stud in good condition. They will, as a great favour, allow us to take a peep into the long harness room, and we are more and more astonished at the magnificence of the owner of the house, when we perceive that the stout leather trappings of the horses are ornamented all over with gold and silver bosses which must have cost an immense price.

And now, having examined the great man's stables, we may take our way to the mansion itself, the great hall door of which stands hospitably open. Passing quickly through this, and only glancing at the high arched roof of polished oak, with ponderous beams across and across, we find our way into the kitchen. An enormous fire of heavy logs of wood piled one upon another, is burning

fiercely on the hearth, which is thrown back from the walls, and is a room of itself; and before that fire, on long spits, are roasting wonderfully large joints of beef, and what seems to be almost a whole carcase of mutton, haunches of venison, and abundance of small game and birds, among which we detect two or three herons, such as we saw killed in our other picture. Numerous as these viands are, we see that there is abundance of room for each to turn on its own spit before the fire; and we observe also that the spits are kept merrily in motion by endless cords or chains; though how these cords or chains are moved we do not exactly. We are told, however, that the machinery is worked either by boys, or by dogs of a curious breed, called turnspits.

see.

Can we count the number of servants in that great kitchen?-men cooks and women cooks, upper and under cooks, helpers and servers, scullery men and scullery boys, servants of all sorts? Not easily. There may be fifty, or sixty, or a hundred; but it is such a scene of confusion, that we are glad to retreat, wondering more and more who the great man can be for whose table all these preparations are going on.

There is one thing we may notice, however, which is, that all the principal servants we see, together with that important person who calls himself" The chief of the kitchen," are Normans; while the scullions and other inferior drudges are Saxon or English, and receive a great many blows and kicks, and much wordy abuse, from their superiors.

Let us wait a little while till the dinner is served, and then intrude ourselves into the presence of the great man—the master of all these servants, and the owner of the house.

We will suppose ourselves, then, in the great dining-room or the refectory of the mansion. It is a large apartment, wide and lofty; and, as befits the season, a large fire of logs, on iron rests, or dogs, as they are called, is blazing on the capacious hearth. There are three tables which fill up the length of the room; they form the three sides of an oblong, thus leaving space for the numerous attendants to serve. There is room enough at these tables for two or three hundred guests; but on this particular day, there are scarcely more than a hundred.

The tables have no damask cloths upon them, for these are not yet in use in England; and the oaken boarded floor is uncovered, for carpets have not been introduced. But the tables are cleanly scoured, and the floor has been kept polished; and, as table-cloths and carpets are not known, they are not missed. Besides, the tables are so covered with silver dishes and platters, that but little of the bare board is visible. There is no lord in the whole land, excepting the king himself, who can boast of so great a profusion of silver at his table, as the master of this feast.

This great personage is now seated at the head of the board, in the centre of the cross table, which is the most honourable position; and on either hand of him are his most highly honoured guests,

who are quite ready to attack the provisions before them, and which have been brought in with much pomp and ceremony by strong, armed serving men. Before they commence, however, a Latin grace is said or sung by a grave personage at the table, whom we may suppose to be the great man's chaplain; and then there is a merry rattling of knives and-No,-not of forks; for nobody in England, nor in Normandy, nor in France, has ever seen a dinner fork; nor would anyone understand how to use it without much instruction. Instead of forks, therefore, they use their fingers; and the knives with which they cut their food, are those which the guests bring with them, carried in a sheath, and stuck into the girdle of their outer garments. To tell the truth, there is a great deal of rudeness and barbarism in the dinner which we, in fancy, are witnessing; although it is only fair to say that the Normans in England have very much improved upon the Saxon way of behaving at table.

And they are all Normans who are present now, —that is to say, with the exception of the host; and there is no one who would not take him also to be a Norman. They are all speaking in NormanFrench, when they talk at all; and if any mention is made of the Saxons, we may be pretty sure it is spoken in disparagement of that down-trodden race.

So they go on feasting, decorously enough, for the Normans are not such great eaters as the Saxons used to be; and they are more delicate also in their beverages. Instead of great vessels

full of mead, or morat, made of honey, and different kinds of thick, muddy ale, such as the Saxons. delighted in, and which they drank, all out of the same cup as it passed round the board, these Normans have bright sparkling wine from Gascony, which is poured out to them from silver flagons into silver cups, and we see that they all drink sparingly. As to the various dishes of which they partake, and from which they are served by the servants, who pass them round to each guest,— perhaps the less we attempt to describe them the better. For, besides what we saw roasting at the great kitchen fire, there are abundance of other things, for which both salt water and fresh, both air and earth, have been put under contribution.

Whose house and stables, and kitchen and refectory, have we now described? They are Thomas à Becket's. Though perhaps his great mansion was not quite so near Westminster as I have supposed it to be; yet the description of what might have been seen about seven hundred years ago, in connection with the rich and powerful Archdeacon of Canterbury and Chancellor of England, and tutor of the king's son, is correct. For this is what historians have related about him:

"Thomas à Becket was King Henry's most assiduous and most intimate companion; he shared in his most worldly pleasures and his most frivolous amusements. Raised in dignity above all the Normans in England, he affected to surpass them in luxury and lordly pomp: he kept in his pay seven hundred horsemen completely armed. He