Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/422

 402 Hi/lory of Dome flic Manners This room is more elaborately furnillied than the former. The fittings of the bed are richer j the chimney is more ornamental in its charafter, and is curious as having three little receffes for holding candlefticks, cups, and other articles 5 and we have a well-fupplied cupboard, though of fimple form. From the colours in the manufcript, all the veflels appear to be of gold, or of filver-gilt. The feat before the fire in this cut (No. 257) feems to be the hutch, or cheft, which in Nos. 261 and 262 we Ihall fee placed at the foot of the bed, from which it is here moved to ferve the occafion. The lady feated on this cheft appears to be wrapping up the new-born infant in fwaddling-clothes ; a cuft:om which, as I have remarked on a former occafion, and as we fliall fee again further on, prevailed univerfally till a comparatively recent period. Infants thus wrapped up are fre- quently feen in the illuminated manufcriptsj and their appearance is certainly anything but pidurefque. We have an exception in one of the No. 258. A Cradle. fculptures on the columns of the Hotel de Ville at Bruifels (reprefented in our cut No. 258), which alfo furniflies us with a curious example of a cradle of the latter part of the fifteenth century. It will, no doubt, have been remarked that in thefe cuts we obferve no traces of carpets on the floor. In our cut No. 256, the floor is evidently boarded 5 but more generally, as in our cuts Nos. 257, 260, and 261, it appears