[Illustration: Cover of a Casket Carved in Whalebone. (_Northumbrian, 8th Century. British Museum._)] Of the furniture of our own country previous to the eleventh or twelfth centuries we know but little. The habits of the Anglo-Saxons were rude and simple, and they advanced but slowly in civilisation until after the Norman invasion. To convey, however, to our minds some idea of the interior of a Saxon thane's castle, we may avail ourselves of Sir Walter Scott's antiquarian research, and borrow his description of the chief apartment in Rotherwood, the hospitable hall of Cedric the Saxon. Though the time treated of in "Ivanhoe" is quite at the end of the twelfth century, yet we have in Cedric a type of man who would have gloried in retaining the customs of his ancestors, who detested and despised the new-fashioned manners of his conquerors, and who came of a race that had probably done very little in the way of "refurnishing" for some generations. If, therefore, we have the reader's pardon for relying upon the _mise en scéne_ of a novel for an authority, we shall imagine the more easily what kind of furniture our Anglo-Saxon forefathers indulged in. [Illustration: Saxon House of 9th or 10th Century. (_From the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum._)] "In a hall, the height of which was greatly disproportioned to its extreme length and width, a long oaken table--formed of planks rough hewn from the forest, and which had scarcely received any polish--stood ready prepared for the evening meal.... On the sides of the apartment hung implements of war and of the chase, and there were at each corner folding doors which gave access to the other parts of the extensive building.