Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/432

 412 Hijlory of Domefiic Ma?j?2ers 260, and 261), and, indeed, in all the illuminated manufcripts of the fifteenth century which contain bedroom fcenes. Wherever this is not the cafe, there is fome evident reafon for the contrary, as in our cut No. 257. During this period we have not fo many piftorial illuftrations of the toilet as might be expefted. The ladies' combs were generally coarfe and large in the teeth, but often very elaborately and beautifully ornamented. The mirror was, as at former periods, merely a circular piece of metal or glals, let in a cafe, which was carved with figures or ornaments externally. The vocabularies mention the mirror as one ot the ufual objefts with which a chamber Ihould be furniflied. Our cut No. 263 is taken from a manufcript (MS. Cotton. Tiberius, A. vii. fol. 93, r°) of the Englifli tranllation of the fingular work of the No. 263. /4 Dealer in Mercery. French writer, Guillaume de Deguilleville, entitled " Le Pelerinage de la Vie Humaine," a poem which bears a ftriking refemblance in its general chara£ter to the "Pilgrim's Progrefs" of Bunyan. The Englilh verfion, which is in verfe, and entitled fimply the "Pilgrim," has been afcribed to Lydgate. In the courfe of his adventures, the pilgrim comes to the lady Agyographe, who is reprefented as dealing in " mercerye," but the enumeration of articles embraced under that term is rather lingular : — Quod