Laudator Temporis Acti

Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (1938; rpt. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1970), p. 50:

As for the eye and ear, there is no doubt where the balance of advantage goes: the majority of medieval towns were infinitely superior to those erected during the last century. One awoke in the medieval town to the crowing of the cock, the chirping of birds nesting under the eaves, or to the tolling of the hours in the monastery on the outskirts, perhaps to the chime of bells in the new bell-tower. Song rose easily on the lips, from the plain chant of the monks to the refrains of the ballad singer in the market place, or that of the apprentice and the house-maid at work. As late as the seventeenth century, the ability to hold a part in a domestic choral song was rated by Pepys as an indispensable quality in a new maid. There were work songs, distinct for each craft, often composed to the rhythmic tapping or hammering of the craftsman himself. Fitz-Stephens reported in the twelfth century that the sound of the water mill was a pleasant one amid the green fields of London. At night there would be complete silence, but for the stirring of animals and the calling of the hours by the town watch. Deep sleep was possible in the medieval town, untainted by either human or mechanical noises.

If the ear was stirred, the eye was even more deeply delighted. The craftsman who had walked through the fields and woods on holiday, came back to his stone-carving or his wood-working with a rich harvest of impressions to be transferred to his work. The buildings, so far from being "quaint," were as bright and clean as a medieval illumination, often covered with whitewash, so that all the colors of the image makers in paint or glass or polychromed wood would dance on the walls, even as the shadows quivered like sprays of lilac on the façades of the more richly carved buildings.