The Marquis occupied the chamber of dais, which, in every house above
the rank of a mere cottage, was kept sacred for such high occasions as
the present. The modern finishing with plaster was then unknown, and
tapestry was confined to the houses of the nobility and superior gentry.
The cooper, therefore, who was a man of some vanity, as well as some
wealth, had imitated the fashion observed by the inferior landholders
and clergy, who usually ornamented their state apartments with hangings
of a sort of stamped leather, manufactured in the Netherlands, garnished
with trees and aminals executed in copper foil, and with many a pithy
sentence of morality, which, although couched in Low Dutch, were perhaps
as much attended to in practice as if written in broad Scotch. The
whole had somewhat of a gloomy aspect; but the fire, composed of
old pitch-barrel staves, blazed merrily up the chimney; the bed was
decorated with linen of most fresh and dazzling whiteness, which had
never before been used, and might, perhaps, have never been used at
all, but for this high occasion.
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