the parlour, this article was made more elaborately, and doors were added to it, for shutting up the plate when not in use. It thus became equivalent to our modern sideboard. We have seen a figure of a cupboard of this more complicated structure in a cut in our last chapter; and we shall have others of different forms in our next. [Illustration: _No. 249. A Sick Room._] Our cut No. 249 is a good representation of the interior of a parlour furnished with the large seat, or settle, and with rather an elaborate and elegant cupboard. The latter, however, does not belong to the picture itself, having been introduced from another in the same manuscript by Mr. Shaw, in his beautiful work the “Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages,” from which it is here taken. It is found in a fine manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 15 D. 1), containing the French translation of the “Historia Scholastica” of Peter Comestor, and written in the year 1470. The subject of this illumination is taken from the Scriptural story of Tobit, who here lies sick and blind on the settle, having just despatched his son Tobias on his journey to the city of Rages. The lady cooking is no doubt intended for his wife Anna; it will be observed that she is following the directions of a book. Cookery books and books of medicinal receipts were now common. The kettle is suspended over the fire by a jack of a construction that occurs not unfrequently in the manuscripts of this period. The settle is placed with its back to the window, which is covered with a large curtain. As the parlours saved the domestic arrangements of the household from the too great publicity of the hall, so on the other hand they relieved the bedchambers from much of what had previously been transacted in them, and thus rendered them more private. In the poem of the “Lady Bessie,” when the earl of Derby and Humphrey Brereton visit the young princess, they are introduced to her in her bower, or chamber, but she immediately conducts the latter into the parlour, in order to converse with him:-- _She took him in her arms, and kissed him times three;_ _“Welcome,” she said, “Humphrey Brereton;_ _How hast thou spedd in the west countrey?_ _I pray thee tell me quickly and anon.”_ _Into a parlour they went from thence,_ _There were no more but hee and shee._