LAVENDER. 30f) 



The winds perfumed, the balmy gale convey 



Through heaven, through earth, and all th' aerial way ; 



Spirit divine ! whose exhalation greets 



The sense of gods with more than mortal sweets." 



lli<ul, 14/// book. 



The Greeks appear to have learnt the 

 more common use of perfumes from the Per- 

 sians ; for when Alexander took the camp of 

 Darius, he found among the royal treasures 

 a great quantity of rich perfumes and costly 

 ointments. From Greece this effeminate 

 practice was carried to Rome, where its abuse 

 became so excessive, that Nero, that com- 

 pound of folly and vice, had his feet anointed 

 with the most expensive odours ; and he is 

 said to have burnt more incense at the 

 funeral pile of his wife Poppa?a than the 

 whole of Arabia produced in a year. 



" I cannot ascertain," says Pliny, " when 

 this enormity first entered Rome ; but it ap- 

 pears upon record, that after the subduing 

 Antiochus, and the conquest of Asia, P. Liei- 

 nius Crassus, and L. Julius Caesar, the Cen- 

 sors, published an edict, prohibiting the sale 

 of foreign ointments in Rome. But in these 

 days, it has entered into our very camps, and 

 the old standards and ensigns and eagles are 

 anointed and perfumed, as if it were to re- 

 ward them for conquering the world. Men 



