The old people of the age regretfully looked back over their lives to former days, when, as they said, although the houses were but of willow, Englishmen were oaken, but now the houses were oaken and the Englishmen of straw. The appearance of chimneys was not greeted as an improvement, for the poor had never fared so well as in the smoky halls of other days; they could not bear the thought that their windows, which were formerly of wickerwork, were now of glass, or that now, instead of sweet rushes, foreign carpets were upon the floors of many houses; or that so many houses were being built of brick and stone, plastered inside. It was regarded as a sure indication of a decline in virility that the sons of the sturdy yeomen of a past generation should crave comfortable beds hung with tapestry, and use pillows--luxuries which once were thought suited only for women in childbed. In the midst of an influx of new comforts, there was a barrenness of things considered to-day to be essential, and the absence of which was made the more glaring by reason of the many comforts and luxuries with which life was surrounded. "Good soap was an almost impossible luxury, and the clothes had to be washed with cow-dung, hemlock, nettles, and refuse soap, than which, in Harrison's opinion, 'there is none more unkindly savor.'" A Dutch traveller, who in 1560 visited England and recorded his impressions of the English home, introduces us to a pleasant picture of the home life of the times, in the following words: "The neat cleanliness, the exquisite fineness, the pleasant and delightful furniture in every point for household, wonderfully rejoiced me; their chambers and parlors strawed over with sweet herbs, refreshed me; their nosegays, finely intermingled with sundry sorts of fragrant flowers in their bedchambers and privy rooms, with comfortable smell cheered me up." The parlors were freshened with green boughs and fresh herbs throughout the summer, and with evergreens during the winter.