said about 7 or 8 a.m. and in France often on the preceding evening in accordance with the statement “evening and morning were one day.” At matins is said the Venite (Ps. xcv.) and a hymn, followed by a Nocturna or night-watch (on Sundays three) which consists of twelve psalms. After the nocturna comes a lesson divided into three parts, one biblical and two patristic, and finally the Te Deum.
Lauds is proper to sunrise, but is mostly grouped with matins. It consists of four psalms, a canticle, psalms 148-150, a hymn, the Benedictus (Luke i. 68-79) and prayers.
Prime (6 a.m.), Terce (9 a.m.), Sext (noon) and None (3 p.m.) are called the Little Day Hours, are often said together, and are alike in character, consisting of a hymn and some sections of Ps. cxix., followed by a prayer. On Sundays the Athanasian Creed is said at prime.
Vespers or Evensong consists of five varying psalms, a hymn, the Magnificat (Luke i. 46-55) and prayers. It belongs theoretically to sunset.
Compline, technically 9 p.m., but usually combined with vespers, is a prayer for protection during the darkness. It consists of the general confession, four fixed psalms, a hymn, the Nunc dimittis (Luke ii. 29-32), prayers and a Commemoration of the Virgin.
The term “canonical hours” is also used of the time during which English marriages may be solemnized without special licence, i.e. between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.
HOUSE (O. Eng. hús, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in Gothic it is only found in gudhûs, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of
“hide,” conceal), the dwelling-place of a human being (treated,
from the architectural point of view, below), or, in a transferred
sense, of an animal, particularly of one whose abode, like that
of the beaver, is built by the animal itself, or, like that of the
snail, resembles in some fancied way a human dwelling. Apart
from the numerous compound uses of the word, denoting the
purpose for which a building is employed, such as custom-house,
lighthouse, bakehouse, greenhouse and the like, there may be
mentioned the particular applications to a chamber of a legislative
body, the Houses of Parliament, House of Representatives, &c.;
to the upper and lower assemblies of convocation; and to the
colleges at a university; the heads of these foundations, known
particularly as master, principal, president, provost, rector, &c.,
are collectively called heads of houses. At English public
schools a “house” is the usual unit of the organization. In the
“houses” the boys sleep, have their “studies” and their meals,
if the school is arranged on the “boarding-house” system.
The houses have their representative teams in the school games,
but have no place in the educational class-system of the school.
It may be noticed that in Scotland the words “house” and
“tenement” are used in a way distinct from the English use,
“tenement” being applied to the large block containing
“houses,” portions, i.e., occupied by separate families. “The
House” is the name colloquially given to such different institutions
as the London Stock Exchange, the House of Commons or
Lords and to a workhouse.
In the transferred sense, “house” is used of a family, genealogically considered, and of the audience at a public meeting or entertainment, especially of a theatre. A “house-physician” and “house-surgeon” is a member of the resident medical staff of a hospital. In astrology the twelve divisions into which the heavens are divided, and through which the planets pass, are known as houses, the first being called the “house of life.” The word “house,” “housing,” used of the trappings of a horse, especially of a covering for the back and flanks, attached to the saddle, is of quite distinct origin. In medieval Latin it appears as hucia, houssia and housia (see Ducange, Glossarium, s.v. housia), and comes into English from the O. Fr. huche, modern housse. It has been supposed to have been adopted, at the time of the crusades, from the Arabic yushiah, a covering.
Architecturally considered, the term “house” is given to a building erected for habitation, in contradistinction to one built for secular or ecclesiastical purposes. The term extends, therefore, to a dwelling of any size, from a single-room building to one containing as many rooms as a palace; thus in London some of the largest dwellings are those inhabited by royalty, such as Marlborough House, or others by men of rank, such as Devonshire House, Bridgewater House, Spencer House, &c.; and even those which, formerly built as habitations, have subsequently been devoted to other purposes, such as Somerset House and Burlington House, retain the term. In Paris the larger houses thus named would be called hôtel.
So far as the history of domestic architecture is concerned, the earliest houses of which remains have been found are those of the village of Kahun in Egypt, which were built for the workmen employed in the building of the pyramid at Illahun, and deserted on its completion. They varied in size from the habitations of the chief inspectors to the single room of the ordinary labourer, and were built in unburnt brick with open courts in the larger examples, to give light and air to the rooms round. The models found in 1907 at Deir-Rifa opposite Assiut in Upper Egypt, by Flinders Petrie, and assumed by him to be those of “soul-houses,” suggest that the early type of building consisted of a hut, to which later a porch or lean-to, with two poles in front, has been added; subsequently, columns replaced the poles, and a flat roof with parapet, suggesting the primitive forms of the Egyptian temple.
The only remains of early houses found in Mesopotamia are those within the precincts of the Temple of Bel, at Nippur, occupied by the king; but beyond the fact that the walls were built in unburnt brick and were sometimes of great thickness, nothing is known.
The houses in Crete would seem to have been small in area, but this was compensated for in height, as the small plaques found in the palace at Cnossus show houses in two or three storeys, with gable roofs and windows subdivided by mullions and transomes, corresponding with those of the 15th to 17th centuries in England. The stone staircase in the palace rising through two storeys shows that even at this early period the houses in towns had floors superposed one above the other; to a certain extent the same extension existed in the later Greek houses found in Delos, in two of which there was clear evidence of wooden staircases leading within to the roof or to an upper storey. The largest series hitherto discovered is that at Priene in Asia Minor, where the remains of some thirty examples were found, varying in dimensions, but all based on the same plan; this consisted of an entrance passage leading to an open court, on the north side of which, and therefore facing south, was an open portico, corresponding to the prostas in Vitruvius (vi. 7), and in the rear two large rooms, one of which might be the oecus or sitting-room, and the other the thalamos or chief bedroom. Other rooms round the court were the triclinium, or dining room, and cubicula or bedchambers. The largest of these houses occupied an area measuring 7530 ft. Those found in Delos, though fewer in number, are of much greater importance, the house in the street of the theatre having twelve rooms exclusive of the entrance passage and the great central court, surrounded on all four sides by a peristyle; in this house the oecus measured 2618 ft. In a second example the prostas consisted of a long gallery, the whole width of the site, which was lighted by windows at each end, the sills of which were raised 8 ft. or 9 ft. from the floor.
The remains of the houses found in the Peiraeus are of the same simple plan as those at Priene, and suggest that the Greek house was considered to be the private residence only for the members of the family, and without any provision for entertaining guests as in Rome and Pompeii. From the descriptions given by Vitruvius (ii. 8) it may be gathered that in his time many of the houses in Rome were built in unburnt brick, the walls of which, if properly protected at the top with a course of burnt brick projecting over the face of the brickwork, and coated inside and outside with stucco, were considered to be more lasting than those built in soft stone. Vitruvius refers also to Greek houses thus built, and states that in the house of Mausolus, at Halicarnassus, the walls were of unburnt brick, and the
