208 A GARDEN OF HERBS 



up your windows. And in the shady places of the Room, 

 you may prove if such shady plants as do grow abroad out 

 of the Sun, will not also grow there : as sweet Bryars, Bays, 

 Germander, etc. But you must often set open your Case- 

 ments, especially in the day time, which would also be many 

 in number ; because Flowers delight and prosper best in the 

 open Air. You may also hang in the Roof, and about the 

 sides of this Room, small Pompions or Cowcumbers, pricked 

 full of Barley, first making holes for the Barley, and these 

 will be overgrown with green spires, so as the Pompion or 

 Cowcumber will not appear." 



Extravagance in perfumes was never so great in England 

 as in France where during the reign of Louis XV it reached 

 its high-water mark. The court then was in truth la com 

 parfumte, and the strict rules of etiquette prescribed the use 

 of a different perfume each day. Madame de Pompadour 

 spent 500,000 livres a year on perfumes for the use of her 

 household at Choisy. Nor have we in England raised the 

 sense of smell to an art like the Breton peasant of whom 

 Dideron tells us in his Annales Archeologiques. This peasant, 

 after musing over the scents of the flowers in the fields, 

 claimed to have discovered the harmonious relation between 

 odours. He came to Paris to give a concert of perfumes, 

 but they took him for a madman. Perhaps, like so many 

 madmen, he was only in advance of his times ; and is not 

 modern science returning to the ancient belief in the value 

 of wholesome and refreshing scents ? 



The old herbalists were never weary of teaching the value 

 of the scents of our aromatic herbs. How great was the 

 popular belief in rosemary to ward off infection may be 

 gathered from the fact that during the great plague in Charles 

 ITs time small bunches of rosemary were sold for six and 

 eight pence. Before the plague an armful cost but twelve 

 pence. Till recently there were at least two curious survivals 

 of this belief in herbal scents the doctors' gold-headed cane 

 which formerly contained a vinaigrette, and the little bou- 

 quets carried by the clergy at the distribution of the Maundy 

 money in Westminster Abbey. " Physicians," wrote Mon- 



