few are of the rudest and most inferior description. Saxon, therefore, as far as the architecture of this country is concerned, is an improper term.[15] [Illustration: SAXON HOUSE.] The ordinary Saxon homes were of clay, held together by wooden frames; bricks being uncommon, and only used as ornaments: the houses were generally low and mean, or as we should call them, cottages. In a Saxon house of larger proportions, the upper rooms only are lighted by windows; there is no appearance of chimneys; the doorway is in one of the gables, and reaches more than half-way to the top of the house; and above it are some small square windows, which indicate an upper room or rooms. On one side is a low shed, or wing, apparently constructed with square stones, or large bricks, covered, like the house, with semicircular tiles, probably shingles, such as we to this day see on church-spires. From the Mead-hall and the other Saxon houses of the period, we also get the type of the modern English mansion, with its _enceinte_ and its lodge-gate, as distinguished from its hall-door. The early Saxon house was the whole inclosure, at the gate of which beggars assembled, for alms, and the porter received the alms of strangers. The whole mass inclosed within this wall constituted the burgh, or tun; and the hall, with its _duru_, or door, was the chief of its edifices. Around it were grouped the sleeping-chambers, or _bowers_, as they were designated till a late age, with the subordinate offices. Mr. Wright (in his able work on the _Domestic Life of the Middle Ages_) draws many of his inferences from the description of the Mead-hall, or _beer-hall_, of Hrothgar, and adds that he believes Bulwer's description of the Saxonized Roman house inhabited by Hilda, in _The Last of the Barons_, is substantially correct. We learn from the romance of Beowulf, that "there was for the sons of the Geats (Beowulf and his followers altogether), a bench cleared in the beer-hall; there the bold spirit, free from quarrel, went to sit; the thane observed his office, he that in his hand bare the twisted ale-cup; he poured the bright sweet liquor; meanwhile the poet sang serene in Heorot (the name of Hrothgar's palace); there was joy of heroes." Although our conceptions of this scene are faint and vague, the antiquary is enabled to represent certain items as "the twisted ale-cup," a favourite fashion of our forefathers, many of whose ale-cups, as discovered in their barrows or graves, are incapable of standing upright, implying that their proprietors were thirsty souls.