is generally placid and calm. There is one thing in which all
classes delighted in the fourteenth century, and that was a garden,
in which flowers bloomed,--things of beauty which were as highly
valued as the useful. Moreover, there was a zest in rural sports
now seldom seen, especially among the upper classes who could
afford to hunt and fish. There was no excitement more delightful
to gentlemen and ladies than that of hawking, and it infinitely
surpassed in interest any rural sport whatever in our day, under
any circumstances. Hawks trained to do the work of fowling-pieces
were therefore greater pets than any dogs that now are the company
of sportsmen. A lady without a falcon on her wrist, when mounted
on her richly caparisoned steed for a morning's sport, was very
rare indeed.

An instructive feature of the "Canterbury Tales" is the view which
Chaucer gives us of the food and houses and dresses of the people.
"In the Nonne's Prestes' Tale we see the cottage and manner of life
of a poor widow." She has three daughters, three pigs, three oxen,
and a sheep. Her house had only two rooms,--an eating-room, which
also served for a kitchen and sitting-room, and a bower or
bedchamber,--both without a chimney, with holes pierced to let in
the light. The table was a board put upon trestles, to be removed
when the meal of black bread and milk, and perchance an egg with
bacon, was over. The three slept without sheets or blankets on a
rude bed, covered only with their ordinary day-clothes. Their
kitchen utensils were a brass pot or two for boiling, a few wooden
platters, an iron candlestick, and a knife or two; while the
furniture was composed of two or three chairs and stools, with a
frame in the wall, with shelves, for clothes and utensils. The
manciple and the cook of the company seem to indicate that living