It is difficult for us to realize what must have been the inane stupidity of the ordinary lives of men. Homes were almost as dreary in their outward appointments as the nests of eagles or the caves of beasts. In the city were narrow apartments of stone or the shanty with its mud-built walls, often as contracted as the cells of the monastery and as damp and fetid as the vaults of the prison; so that the monk lost little of this world’s comfort in entering his religious retreat, and the prisoner might think himself happy at times in being better housed than he would have been had he made his home with honest toil. If one lived in the country the habitation was a hut but little better than the shelter provided for cattle. Indeed, in many cases the “ox knew his owner” from having slept on the same straw, and the “ass his master’s crib” from its proximity to the family table. The floor of the rude domicile was of earth or stone, the windows unglazed, so that to exclude the winter weather was to shut out the light also. A hole in the roof scarcely sufficed to carry off the smoke from the stoveless fires. No books entertained man’s thoughts, no pictures pleased his eye; his news was the gossip of oft-told tales, his faith such as a priest, himself unable to read, might impose upon his less intelligent parishioners. Even the peasant’s liberty of his own solitude was denied him; he could not range the woods nor float upon the streams at his pleasure. We are told of certain instances where the rustics rebelled against these restrictions imposed upon them. “They took short cuts through the woods, or used the fords and rivers at will;” but they were punished by the knights, who “cut off the hands and feet of the trespassers.” If the rich were better conditioned, their residences were unfurnished with that which the middle classes in our day regard as necessary to comfort and decency. The bounty of the table was without variety. Apparel, however gay, was such as could be wrought by the women of the household. The tapestries which excite our admiration were the product of untold toil or purchased at vast expense. Within the castle was spacious monotony, relieved too generally by the grossness of private debauch; without was the wilderness, threaded by roads that were unfit for wheeled vehicles, menaced by wild beasts and more dangerous men.