led to various plans for superseding it. One of these was, to fix up against the walls of the room frames for holding the torches, of which an example is given in the accompanying cut (No. 247), representing a torch-frame, still preserved in the Palazzo Strozzi at Florence. One of the group, it will be observed, has a long spike, intended to hold a large candle. Candlesticks fixed to the wall in various manners are seen in manuscripts of the fifteenth century; and an example is given in our cut No. 248, taken from a part of the same illumination of Froissart mentioned before. The candle is here placed before a little image, on the upper part of the fireplace, but whether this was for a religious purpose or not, is not clear. In this cut, the three princesses are seated on the large chair or settle, which is turned with its back to the fire. This important article of furniture is now found in the parlour as well as in the hall. [Illustration: _No. 247. Candle and Torch-holders._] [Illustration: _No. 248.--Ladies Seated._] CHAPTER XVIII. IN-DOOR LIFE AND CONVERSATION.--PET ANIMALS.--THE DANCE.--RERE-SUPPERS.--ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE “NANCY” TAPESTRY. As people began to have less taste for the publicity of the old hall, they gradually withdrew from it into the parlours for many of the purposes to which the hall was originally devoted, and thus the latter lost much of its former character. The parlour was now the place commonly used for the family meals. In a curious little treatise on the “most vyle and detestable use of dyce play,” composed near the beginning of the sixteenth century, one of the interlocutors is made to say, “So down we came again,” _i.e._ from the chambers above, “into the parlour, and found there divers gentlemen, all strangers to me; and what should I say more, but to dinner we went.” The dinner hour, we learn from this same tract, was then at the hour of noon; “the table,” we are told, “was fair spread with diaper cloths, the cupboard garnished with much goodly plate.” The cupboard seems now to have been considered a necessary article of furniture in the parlour; it had originally belonged to the hall, and was of simple construction. One of the great objects of ostentation in a rich man’s house was his plate; which, at dinner time, he brought forth, and caused to be spread on a table in sight of his guests; afterwards, to exhibit the plate to more advantage, the table was made with shelves, or steps, on which the different articles could be arranged in rows one above another. It was called in French and Anglo-Norman a _buffet_, or a _dressoir_ (dresser), the latter name, it is said, being given to it because on it the different articles were _dressés_, or arranged. The English had, in their own language, no special name for this article of furniture, so that they called it literally a cup-board, or board for the cups. In course of time, and especially when it was removed from the hall into