Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/468

 4+8 Hijiory of Dome/iic Manners contrivance of forming it into a box, with a feparate iron which was to be heated and placed infide. The fire-irons, as we find them enumerated in writings or pi6tured in engravings, appear to have formed the fame lift, or nearly fo, though of courfe differing in form and ornament according to the varying fafliions of the day, until at a confiderably later period they were reduced to the modern trio of fliovel, poker, and tongs. The fingle pothook, with a contrivance for lengthening it and fhortening it, is Ihown in our cut No. 282, taken from one of the remarkable wood engravings in " Der Weifs Kunig," — a feries of prints illuftrative of the youthful life of Maximilian I. of Germany, who afcended the imperial throne in 149,3. The engravings are of the fixteenth century, and the form of the fire- place belongs altogether to the age of the RenailTance. The gallows, with its pothooks or crokes of different lengths, appears in our cut No. 283, taken from Barclay's "Ship of Fools," the edition of 1570, though the defign is fomewhat older. The method of attaching the crooks to one fide of the fireplace, when not in ufe, is exhibited in this engraving, as alfo the mode in which other fmaller utenfils were attached to the walls. In this latter inftance there are no dogs or andirons in the fireplace.