Independent, however, of what may be considered more especially as scholarship, a considerable amount of instruction began now to be spread abroad. Reading and writing were becoming much more general accomplishments, especially among ladies. Among the amusements of leisure hours, indeed, reading began now to occupy a much larger place than had been given to it in former ages. Even still, popular literature--in the shape of tales, and ballads and songs--was, in a great measure, communicated orally. But much had been done during the fourteenth century towards spreading a taste for literature and knowledge; books were multiplied, and were extensively read; and wants were already arising which soon led the way to that most important of modern discoveries, the art of printing. Most gentlemen had now a few books, and men of wealth had considerable libraries. The wills of this period, still preserved, often enumerate the books possessed by the testator, and show the high value which was set upon them. Many of the illuminations of the fourteenth century present us with ingenious, and sometimes fantastic, forms of book-cases and book-stands. In our cut No. 227, from a manuscript of metrical relations of miracles of the Virgin Mary, now preserved in the library of the city of Soissons in France, we have a monk reading, seated before a book-stand, the table of which moves up and down on a screw. Upon this table is the inkstand, and below it apparently the inkbottle; and the table has in itself receptacles for books and paper or parchment. In the wall of the room are cupboards, also for the reception of books, as we see by one lying loose in them. The man is here seated on a stool; but in our cut No. 228, taken from a manuscript in the National Library in Paris (No. 6985), he is seated in a chair, with a writing-desk attached to it. The scribe holds in his hand a pen, with which he is writing, and a knife to scratch the parchment where anything may need erasion. The table here is also of a curious construction, and it is covered with books. Other examples are found, which show that considerable ingenuity was employed in varying the forms of such library tables. [Illustration: _No. 228. A Mediæval Writer._]