The chief rooms formerly required in a house of that date were,- The Hall, for the entertainment of friends and vassals; a large and lofty room, having the floor at one end raised above the common level, as at present in the halls of our colleges; this was to mark some distinction in the different ranks of the guests. The next large room required was a Gallery, for the reception of company in a morning, for dancing in the evening, and for the exercise of the family within doors. Very few books were then in use; and, instead of the newspapers and pamphlets of the present day, the general information was collected in conversations held in those long galleries, which had large recesses, or bays,* sometimes called bowre-windows, and now bow-windows; into which some of the company would occasionally withdraw, for conversation of a more private nature, as we frequently read in the Memoires de Sully, &c. But the apartment, of all others, which was deemed indispensable in former times, and in which the magnificence of the proprietor was greatly displayed, was the Chapel.
*["If this law hold in Vienna ten years, I'll rent the fairest house in it after three-pence a bay."-Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. I. "The fashion of building, in our author's time, was to have two or three juttings out in front, which we still see in old houses, where the windows were placed, and these projections were called bays, as the windows were from thence called bay-windows."-Theobald, ibid. These projections answer to the Exhedra of the Greeks and Romans.]
