72

Plate XIX.—Cl )£ —This term is sometimes applied as

a general one to farm-houses; and, by Johnson and other writers, tohouses in lonely situations :

“ Did house him in a peakish grange,

Within a forest great.”— Warner, a poet of Elizabeth's time.

But, in its proper application, it describes the manor-farm, includinghouse, land,"&c.

Gentlemen’s residences were, and are indeed now, designated granges.Dr. Whitaker says, that “ whoever wishes to see in what manner the in-ferior gentry were lodged three or four centuries ago, will inform and con-gratulate himself at once by studying the grange of Whalley.” “ This,”he adds, “ is a valuable specimen ; for though we know pretty well howthe knight, the peer, the monk, and the lord of the manor, were lodgedat that period, we should by no other means that I know of have beenable to form a guess at the accommodation of the next inferior rank.”

Before the great forests became exhausted, our country-towns weremore amply supplied with timber than with stone; and the houses wereaccordingly designed to employ in their construction as much as possibleof the former, and to spare the latter material. In order to produce anequal effect throughout the exterior, the entire surface of the walling andframe-work was cased with a durable plaster, called rough-cast, made oflime, hair, and coarse sand, abounding with small stones: this compositionwas sometimes studded with fragments of glass, “ which,” as an oldwriter says, “ made a brilliant display when the sun shone, and even bymoonlight.”

Rough-cast was indeed the common covering of walls in Shakspeare’s