Perhaps even more interesting as a study than Warwick Castle is Haddon Hall, the well-preserved residence of the Duke of Rutland, in Derbyshire. The five or six successive enlargements and additions which this building has received between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries show the growth of ideas of comfort and even luxury in this country. As it now stands, Haddon Hall contains two internal quadrangles, separated from one another by the great hall with its dais, its minstrels' gallery, its vast open fire-place, and its traceried windows, and by the kitchens, butteries, &c., belonging to it. The most important apartments are reached from the upper end of the hall, and consist of the magnificent ball-room, and a dining-room in the usual position, _i.e._ adjoining the hall and opening out of it; with, on the upper floor, a drawing-room, and a suite of state bed-rooms, occupying the south side of both quadrangles and the east end of one. A large range of apartments, added at a late period, and many of them finely panelled and lined with tapestry, occupies the north side of this building and the northwestern tower. At the south-western corner of the building stands a chapel of considerable size, and which once seems to have served as a kind of parochial church; and a very considerable number of rooms of small size, opening out of both quadrangles, would afford shelter, if not comfortable lodging, to retainers, servants, and others. The portions built in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries are more or less fortified. The ball-room, which is of Elizabethan architecture, opens on to a terraced garden, accessible from without by no more violent means than climbing over a not very formidable wall. Probably nowhere in England, can the growth of domestic architecture be better studied, whether we look to the alterations which took place in accommodation and arrangement, or to the changes which occurred in the architectural treatment of windows, battlements, doorways and other features, than at Haddon Hall. [Illustration: FIG. 9.--PALACES ON THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE. (14TH CENTURY.)] In towns and cities much beautiful domestic architecture is to be found in the ordinary dwelling-houses, _e.g._ houses from Chester and Lisieux (Figs. 14 and 15); but many specimens have of course perished, especially as timber was freely used in their construction. Dwelling-houses of a high order of excellence, and of large size, were also built during this period. The Gothic palaces of Venice, of which many stand on the Grand Canal (Fig. 9), are the best examples of these, and the lordly Ducal Palace in that city is perhaps the finest secular building which exists of Gothic architecture. Municipal buildings of great size and beauty are to be found in North Italy and Germany, but chiefly in Belgium, where the various town-halls of Louvain, Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, &c., vie with each other in magnificence and extent.