[962] Dictionnaire des Arts et des Métiers, par Jaubert, vol. iv. p. 534.
... Ces honnêtes enfans
Qui de Savoye arrivent tous les ans,
Et dont la main légèrement essuye
Ces longs canaux, engorgés par la suie.—Voltaire.
[964] “C’est ainsi que se ramonent toutes les cheminées de Paris; et des régisseurs n’ont enrégimenté ces petits malheureux, que pour gagner encore sur leur médiocre salaire. Puissent ces ineptes et barbares entrepreneurs se ruiner de fond en comble; ainsi que tous ceux qui ont sollicité des privileges exclusifs!”—Tableau de Paris. Hamburg, 1781, tom. ii. p. 249. [Owing to many serious accidents which attended the climbing of chimneys, this practice was put down in this country by Act of Parliament, (3 & 4 Victoria, c. 85. sec. 2.). The use of machinery is now substituted, but does not perform the operation so effectively as the old mode, especially where the flues are in angles.]
HUNGARY WATER.
Hungary water is spirit of wine distilled upon rosemary, and which therefore contains the essential oil and powerful aroma of that plant. To be really good the spirit of wine ought to be very strong and the rosemary fresh; and if that be the case, the leaves are as proper as the flowers, which according to the prescription of some should only be employed. It is likewise necessary that the spirit of wine be distilled several times over the rosemary; but that process is too troublesome and expensive to admit of this water being disposed of at the low price for which it is usually sold; and it is certain that the greater part of it is nothing else than common spirit, united with the essence of rosemary in the simplest manner. In general, it is only mixed with a few drops of the oil. For a long time past this article has been brought to us principally from France, where it is prepared, particularly at Beaucaire, Montpelier, and other places in Languedoc, where that plant grows in great abundance.
The name, l’eau de la reine d’Hongrie, seems to signify that this water, so celebrated for its medicinal virtues, is an Hungarian invention; and we read in many books that the receipt for preparing it was given to a queen of Hungary by a hermit, or as others say, by an angel, who appeared to her in a garden all entrance to which was shut, in the form of a hermit or a youth[965]. Some call the queen St. Isabella[966]; but those who pretend to be best acquainted with the circumstance affirm that Elizabeth wife of Charles Robert king of Hungary, and daughter of Uladislaus II. king of Poland, who died in 1380 or 1381, was the inventress. By often washing with this spirit of rosemary, when in the seventieth year of her age, she was cured, as we are told, of the gout and an universal lameness; so that she not only lived to pass eighty, but became so lively and beautiful that she was courted by the king of Poland, who was then a widower, and who wished to make her his second wife.
John George Hoyer[967] says that the receipt for preparing this water, written by queen Elizabeth’s own hand, in golden characters, is still preserved in the Imperial library at Vienna. But it has been already remarked by others[968] that Hoyer is mistaken, and that he does not properly remember the account given of the receipt. It is to be found for the first time, as far as I know, in a small book by John Prevot, which, after his death in 1631, was published by his two sons at Frankfort in 1659[969].