It must not be forgotten that it is partly to the use of playing cards that we owe the invention which has been justly regarded as one of the greatest benefits granted to mankind. The first cards, as we have seen, were painted with the hand. They were subsequently made more rapidly by a process called stencilling--that is, by cutting the rude forms through a piece of pasteboard, parchment, or thin metal, which, placed on the cardboard intended to receive the impression, was brushed over with ink or colour, which passed through the cut out lines, and imparted the figure to the material beneath. A further improvement was made by cutting the figures on blocks of wood, and literally printing them on the cards. These card-blocks are supposed to have given the first idea of wood-engraving. When people saw the effects of cutting the figures of the cards upon blocks, they began to cut figures of saints on blocks in the same manner, and then applied the method to other subjects, cutting in like manner the few words of necessary explanation. This practice further expanded itself into what are called block-books, consisting of pictorial subjects, with copious explanatory text. Some one at length hit upon the idea of cutting the pages of a regular book on so many blocks of wood, and taking impressions on paper or vellum, instead of writing the manuscript; and this plan was soon further improved by cutting letters or words on separate pieces of wood, and setting them up together to form pages. The wood was subsequently superseded by metal. And thus originated the noble art of PRINTING. CHAPTER XI. DOMESTIC AMUSEMENTS AFTER DINNER.--THE CHAMBER AND ITS FURNITURE.--PET ANIMALS.--OCCUPATIONS AND MANNERS OF THE LADIES.--SUPPER.--CANDLES, LAMPS, AND LANTERNS. When the dinner was over, and hands washed, a drink was served round, and then the ladies left the table, and went to their chambers or to the garden or fields, to seek their own amusements, which consisted frequently of dancing, in which they were often joined by the younger of the male portion of the household, while the others remained drinking. They seem often to have gone to drink in another apartment, or secondary hall, perhaps in the parlour. In the romance of “La Violette” (p. 159), we read of the father of a family going to sleep after dinner. In the same romance (p. 152), the young ladies and gentlemen of a noble household are described as spreading themselves over the castle, to amuse themselves, attended by minstrels with music. From other romances we find that this amusement consisted often in dancing, and that the ladies sometimes sang for themselves, instead of having minstrels. We find these amusements alluded to in the fabliaux and romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In one of the fabliaux, a knight having been received hospitably at a feudal castle, after dinner they wash, and drink round, and then they go to dance--