Our cut No. 262, taken from the same manuscript of the Bible which furnished our last illustration, represents the hutch also in its place at the foot of the bed. This sketch is interesting, both as showing more distinctly than the others the rings of the bed-curtains, and the rods attached to the celure, and as a particularly good illustration of the habit which still continued in all classes and ranks of society, of sleeping in bed entirely naked. The same practice is shown in several of our other cuts (see Nos. 256, 260, and 261), and, indeed, in all the illuminated manuscripts of the fifteenth century which contain bedroom scenes. Wherever this is not the case, there is some evident reason for the contrary, as in our cut No. 257. During this period we have not so many pictorial illustrations of the toilet as might be expected. The ladies’ combs were generally coarse and large in the teeth, but often very elaborately and beautifully ornamented. The mirror was, as at former periods, merely a circular piece of metal or glass, set in a case, which was carved with figures or ornaments externally. The vocabularies mention the mirror as one of the usual objects with which a chamber should be furnished. [Illustration: _No. 263. A Dealer in Mercery._] Our cut No. 263 is taken from a manuscript (MS. Cotton. Tiberius, A. vii. fol. 93, r^o) of the English translation of the singular work of the French writer, Guillaume de Deguilleville, entitled “Le Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine,” a poem which bears a striking resemblance in its general character to the “Pilgrim’s Progress” of Bunyan. The English version, which is in verse, and entitled simply the “Pilgrim,” has been ascribed to Lydgate. In the course of his adventures, the pilgrim comes to the lady Agyographe, who is represented as dealing in “mercerye,” but the enumeration of articles embraced under that term is rather singular:-- _Quod sche, “Geve_ (if) _I schal the telle,_ _Mercerye I have to selle;_ _In boystes_ (boxes) _soote_ (sweet) _oynementis,_ _Therewith to don allegementis_ (to give relief) _To ffolkes whiche be not glade,_ _But discorded and mallade,_ _And hurte with perturbacyouns_ _Off many trybulacyouns._ _I have knyves, phylletys, callys,_ _At ffeestes to hang upon wallys;_ _Kombes mo than nyne or ten,_ _Bothe ffor horse and eke ffor men;_ _Merours also, large and brode,_ _And ffor the syght wonder gode;_ _Off hem I have fful greet plenté,_ _For ffolke that haven volunté_ _Byholde hemsilffe therynne.”_ Our cut represents the interior of the house of the lady mercer, with the various articles enumerated in the text; the boxes of ointment, the horse-combs, the men’s combs, and the mirrors. She first offers the pilgrim a mirror, made so as to flatter people, by representing them handsomer than they really were, which the pilgrim refuses:--