=49. Rural characteristics of the towns.=—Another misconception must be guarded against. Though the town was a distinctly industrial group in comparison with the village, yet each town had grown from a village, and retained many features of its agricultural infancy even to a late period. Most of the townspeople owned some land which they used for garden plots, and every town had considerable amounts of arable and pasture land outside the walls which was used for the benefit of the townspeople if not actually worked by them. In Coblentz, in the thirteenth century, work on the city walls was stopped during harvest by lack of labor, and in London at the same period people were allowed to keep pigs “within their houses,” and the attempt to keep vagrant swine off the streets was a distinct failure. =50. General description of a town.=—There were generally a few streets that were broad and straight, as they were the old highways on which the town had grown up. The attempt was made to keep these clear of encroaching houses and shops by sending a horseman through them once a year with a spear held horizontally, and by forcing the removal of obstructions. Most of the streets, however, had grown up from village by-paths and were narrow and crooked. They were rarely paved, and as they served as the repository for all kinds of offal and garbage we can understand why the townspeople wore wooden overshoes when they went out, and even the saints in the pictures were painted with them on. The houses were of wood in the early period, and there were no chimneys, so that fires were frequent and disastrous until they forced people to a better mode of building. Travelers in Europe now remark upon the picturesque beauty of the old houses, and upon the merits of their construction, but it should be noted that most of these relics date from the very end of the Middle Ages and that they were the select few of their time, and give no indication of the character of the average house. Most of the people lived in narrow quarters, dark and drafty, unsuited for good work places and unwholesome as habitations. Wares were exposed for sale either in the open market-places which are so common in European towns, or in little shops like pedlers’ booths at the front of the house. The municipal government spent little or nothing for public works or police protection; it tried to make the inhabitants share in performing all absolutely necessary duties, but succeeded so ill that all the towns were sinks of disease, and breach of the peace was a constant occurrence.