Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/517

 and Sentimejtts. 497 for ladies to various individuals, and Brantome feems to have thought that this praftice was firft brought into fafliion by Catherine de Medicis. The laft cut is taken from a drawing in the curious Album of Charles de Boufy, containing dates from 1608 to 1638, and now preferved among the Sloane manufcripts (No. 341,5) in the Britilh Mufeum ; and the fame manufcript has aUb furnilhed us with the annexed cut (No. 318) of a lady of rank carried in her chair, with her chair-bearers and attendants. Ladies, and efpecially perfons fulfering from illnefs, were often carried in horfe-litters, and there are inftances of chairs mounted fomewhat like the No. 318. A Lady carried in her Chair. one here reprefented, and carried by horfes. The firft attempt towards the modern gig or cabriolet appears to have been a chair fixed in a cart, fomething in the ftyle of that reprefented in our cut No. 319, which in its ornamentation has a very mediaeval charafter, although it is given as from a manufcript in the Imperial Library in Paris (No. 6808), of the beginning of the fixteenth century. The clofe of the period of which we are here fpeaking introduces us to one in which the manners and cuftoms of our forefathers were lets widely different from thofe of our own days ; and the hiftory of domeftic manners fince that time, charaderifed lefs by broad outline of the general 3 s features