at command, the following simple process,
recommended by Mr. Piesse, of New Bond-street, will
concentrate and preserve those odours.* The
flowers must be gathered with as little stalk as
possible, and then placed in a jar three parts
full of oil of sweet almonds, or the purest
Lucca olive oil. After remaining twenty-four
hours steeped they are to be squeezed in a
coarse cotton cloth, and fresh flowers added
to the oil, and this repeated from day to
day until the required perfume is procured.
When the oil is considered sufficiently saturated,
it should be mixed with an equal quantity of
the purest and strongest rectified spirits to be
obtained at the chemist's, and the jar or bottle
containing the mixture well shaken every day
for a fortnight, when it may be poured off quite
bright and highly charged with the odoriferous
principle. When only one kind of flower is
used, the quantity required to produce a highly
scented oil, is considerable, but the amateur
experimentalist can scarcely hope for any but a
mixed, or, as the French term it, "mille fleur,"
or thousand flower perfume, in which the scent
of the peculiar flower most abundant may
prevail.

* See page 607 of our fifth volume.

The preparation of cosmetics was at a very
early period even in England combined with
that of perfumes. A very curious and scarce
book was "Imprinted in London" in the early
part of the reign of Elizabeth, A.D. 1560,
"The secrets of the reverend Master Alexis of
Piemount, translated by William Warde," and
in its quaint pages will be found a variety of
secrets, and amongst them several "for making
a natural white skin," and "making the skin
fair and bright," in which oil of almonds and
rose-water would seem to be the favourite
ingredients. The modern perfumer will there find
directions for preparing musked and odoriferous
soaps with dentifrices or rubbers for the teeth,
and pastiles; all of which must have been in
use three centuries past. We have secrets for
"waters to beautify the face" and "to make
people look young and to make a goodly lustre
for the face, good for ladies and dames," and
"an ointment for the face which altereth the
skin and reneweth it finely." One of the secrets
may amuse our fair friends; and, although we do
not vouch for its efficacy, we venture to predict
that the experiment will not be attended with
injurious effects. "Take a great lemon, and
make a hole in the top of him, through the
which hole, you shall take out of the substance
within the bigness of a walnut, and fill it again
with sugar-candy, with four or five gold foyle
leaves, and cover it again with the piece that
you take off, sowing it with a needle, so that it may
remain fast on. Then set the sayde lemon to roste
upon the coales right up, and after as it shall
begin to roste or boyle, tourne it often, until it
hath sweate a good space, then take it off. And
when you will use of it putte one of your fingers
into the hole that was sowed up, and rub your
face with it with some fine linen-cloth, and it
will prove an exquisite thing!" We trust that
those who make the trial may find it so.

Fashion has as yet forgotten to revive what
were once favourite embellishments of beauty,
patches of black silk covered with isinglass, an
adornment so highly patronised as to obtain the
name it still bears of court-plaister. These
patches were artistically distributed on the
cheeks and chin as foils to divert the eye from
certain features, or as beauty-spots to attract
attention to others. Pope, in describing the
toilet of his favourite heroine, Belinda, thus
alludes to them:

    And now unveiled the toilet stands displayed,
    Each silver vase in mystic order laid,
    First robed in white, the nymph intent adores
    With head uncovered the cosmetic powers.
    This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
    And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
    The tortoise here and elephant unite,
    Transformed to combs, the speckled
    and the white;
    Here piles of pins extend their shining rows,
    Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.

Addison, in the Spectator, describes two rival
beauties of the day: "They were patched
differently, and cast hostile glances on one another,
and their patches were placed in different situations
as party signals to distinguish friends from
foes." Black sticking plaister was cut out into
the most ridiculous forms and stuck on the face.
Conceive a beauty displaying on her cheek, a
hearse!—the coaches and six to which the belle
gave her countenance, having been cut out in
black plaister. Silhouettes of stars, flowers, hour-
glasses, and even comical little demons were
commonly sold by perfumers for face-patching.

Before we conclude, let us retouch the subject
of paint; for the age of no-paint has not yet
arrived. A streak of black under the eyes
(borrowed from the land of Egypt) and the timidest
idea of red may, to this day, be detected upon
the cheeks of ladies, to whom no suspicion of
enamelling need attach. When you see a pair of
piquant eyes surmounting a faint blush under
the half-veil now so fashionable, and which pretty
black lace "fall" is not raised during a long
morning visit, you may conclude that the pencil
and tinting-pad have been at work.

RED-CAPE.

I AM by profession a tutor. Carefully
educated, and of a studious disposition from the
first, I had been designed by my father for the
bar, but his commercial misfortunes, followed by
ruin and death, had compelled me to leave the
university without even the barren advantage
of a degree. Fit to teach, and fit, as discerning
friends unanimously declared, for nothing else
under the sun, I was induced to apply such
abilities as I possessed to the task of tuition.
Having passed some years in this calling: now
assistant master in a school: now "coach" to a
party of young Oxonians or Cantabs reading
through a vacation spent in Wales or Cumberland:
I at length found myself in want of an