Preserved in Salt.
We are told that Pharnaces caused the body of his father, Mithridates, to be deposited in salt brine, in order that he might transmit it to Pompey. Sigebert, who died in 1113, informs us that a like process was employed upon the body of St. Guibert, that it might be kept during a journey in summer. The priests preserved in salt the sow which afforded a happy omen to Æneas by having brought forth a litter of thirty pigs, as we are told by Varro, in whose time the animal was still shown at Lavinium. The hippopotamus described by Columna was sent to him from Egypt preserved in salt.
Luxury in 1562.
The luxury of the present time does not equal, in one article at least, that of the sixteenth century. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the queen's ambassador at Paris, in a letter to Sir Thomas Chaloner, the ambassador at Madrid, in June 1562, says—
"I pray you good my Lord Ambassador sende me two paire of perfumed gloves, perfumed with orrange flowers and jacemin, th' one for my wives hand, the other for mine owne; and wherin soever I can pleasure you with anything in this countrey, you shall have it in recompence thereof, or els so moche money as they shall coste you, provided alwaies that they be of the best choise, wherin your judgment is inferior to none."
Trains in the Fourteenth Century.
In Mr. Wright's collection of Latin stories, there is one of the fourteenth century—a monkish satire upon dresses with long trains—
Of a Proud Woman.—I have heard of a proud woman who wore a white dress with a long train, which, trailing behind her, raised a dust as far as the altar and the crucifix. But, as she left the church, and lifted up her train on account of the dirt, a certain holy man saw a devil laughing; and having adjured him to tell why he laughed, the devil said: "A companion of mine was just now sitting on the train of that woman, using it as if it were his chariot, but when she lifted her train up, my companion was shaken off into the dirt, and that is why I was laughing."
Foppery in Eminent Men.
Peculiarities of dress, even amounting to foppery, so common among eminent men, are carried off from ridicule by ease in some or stateliness in others. We may smile at Chatham, scrupulously crowned in his best wig, if intending to speak; at Erskine, drawing on his bright yellow gloves before he rose to plead; at Horace Walpole, in a cravat of Gibbon's carvings; at Raleigh, loading his shoes with jewels so heavy that he could scarcely walk; at Petrarch, pinching his feet till he crippled them; at the rings which covered the philosophical fingers of Aristotle; at the bare throat of Byron; the American dress of Rousseau; the scarlet and gold coat of Voltaire; or the prudent carefulness with which Cæsar scratched his head so as not to disturb the locks arranged over the bald place. But most of these men, we apprehend, found it easy to enforce respect and curb impertinence.—Edinburgh Review.