[323:A] The Bishop of Durham, within his Diocese, has many of the privileges of a Lay Peer; and Dr. Talbot had then lately succeeded to that See.
[338:A] See London Chronicle, vol. XI. p. 167, for 1762.
[353:A] London Chronicle, Feb. 14, 1763.
CHAP. IX.
DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE TRACED FROM ITS ORIGIN TO ITS PRESENT IMPROVED STATE IN LONDON—LIGHTING AND IMPROVING OF STREETS—OBSTRUCTIONS IN THEM—ORNAMENTS, &C. &C.
The annual movement of the Sun to the South renders it an indisputable fact, that the Northern climate of England must have made huts or caves indispensibly necessary to the inhabitants, at least five months of each twelve, from the hour that our country was peopled. Ideas are useless on such a subject; sensation is sufficient; and instinct, which compels a brute to seek shelter under ground, or in a hollow tree, from the inclemency of the season, cannot have been so far denied to the Briton as to lead him to other expedients less calculated to answer his purpose. I do not hesitate, therefore, to assert that our
Aborigines fortified existence in caverns natural and artificial, and in huts constructed of branches easily separated from trees, and covered or thatched with leaves and dried plants; nay, the piling of flat stones on each other seems an operation so easy and natural, that I cannot conceive why the art should have been imported; indeed, mortar is suggested by wet earth or mud dried on river sides by the air; and who knows but that our mud walls and even mud villages now to be found in numbers North of London may be the traditionary houses of our remotest ancestors[359:A]?
After this Island was invaded, the habitations of the various nations which accomplished the invasions were introduced by imitation, and copies of Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman houses were doubtlessly common. The Tesselated Pavements and Baths still discovered belong to the first; but their form can only be supposed, I should imagine, from the discoveries at Herculaneum.