=Interiors.=--And this is equally true of the interiors. Comfort is not sacrificed to stateliness. The chief apartments may attain grand proportions, but they do not give the impression of being reserved for merely ceremonial purposes; they are centres of domestic life. The Gothic feature of the Great Hall was preserved; and, in the early examples, while the family and the retainers still took their meals together, a dais occupied one end, the opposite end being separated from the buttery or larder, and the kitchen by a richly decorated wooden screen, above which was the minstrel gallery. The conspicuous feature of the hall was the fireplace, with a chimneypiece on which the most elaborate decoration was lavished, the rest of the walls being panelled in wood to a height of eight or ten feet, leaving a space above for trophies of the chase or family portraits. This type of hall is still retained in all the dining halls of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Adjoining the hall was a _solar_ for the intimate life of the family. Gradually, as the taste for privacy increased, a separate room was used for dining and other living-rooms were added until the hall came to be more and more an entrance hall, and the main living apartments were disposed as in Italian and French custom, on the second floor. This caused the staircase to be treated as a prominent feature, which, as it were, prolonged the spaciousness of the hall. Occasionally of marble or stone, it was usually constructed of oak with massive newel-posts and balustrade, richly decorated. In the earlier examples, and even in some later ones, as Inigo Jones’s design of =Chevening House=, the apartments are arranged on the “thoroughfare” system, opening into one another en suite. But the inconvenience of this in the entertaining of guests led to the adoption of a corridor along one side. By degrees this was widened and developed into what is the most distinctive feature of these old English houses--the Long Gallery. Lit with tall windows, often with deep bays that form attractive alcoves, it served as a pleasant sitting-room and equally as a place for exercise in wet weather, while its inner wall provided space for pictures. In fact, this room seems to have been the origin of the term “_picture gallery_.” Special care was bestowed upon the ceilings. Occasionally the beams were exposed, but the usual practice by this time was to sheathe them with lath and plaster, the surface of which was decorated with stucco relief in geometrical designs. At times the flat of the ceiling was connected with the walls by a concave member, called a _cove_. Often, when the wainscot was not carried up to the level of this, the upper part or dado also was decorated with stucco relief.