Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/495

 and Sentiments MS At the commencement of the feventeenth century this pradice was aheady beginning to go out of fafliion, and it was not long afterwards that it was entirely laid afide : and the walls were again covered with panels, or painted or whitewalhed, and adorned with pidures. In our laft cut, of the date of 1633, we fee the walls thus decorated with paintings. The rapid focial revolution which was now going on, gradually pro- duced changes in moft of the articles of domettic economy. Thus, the old fpiked candleftick was early in the century fupcrfeded by the modern focket candleftick. The chandelier reprefented in our cut No. 299, taken from one of Albert Durer's prints of the Life of the Virgin, publilhed in 1509, in its fpikes for the candles and its other charafteriftics, belongs to a ruder and earlier ftyle of houfe- hold furniture, and has nothing in common with the rich chandeliers which now began to be ufed. The parlour appears in the lix- teenth century to have been a room the particular ufe of which was in a ftate of tranfition. Subfequently, as domeflic life affumed greater privacy than when people lived publicly in the hall, the parlour became the living roomj but in the fixteenth century, though in London it was already ufed as the dining-room. In the country it appears to have been confidered as a fort of amalgamation of a ftore-room and a bedroom. This is beft undcrftood from the different inventories of its furniture which have been preferved. In 1558, the parlour of Robert Hyndmer, redor of Sedgeheld, in the county of Durham, contained — " a table with a joined frame, t o forms, and a carpet j carved cupboards j a plain cupboard j nine joined llools ; hangings of tapeftryj and a turned chair." In the parlour at Hilton Caflle, in the fame No. 299. A Chandelier of the Sixteenth Century.