rapidly supplied with everything they fancied.
Paracelsus, in the sixteenth century, looked
for a patient's symptoms in the stars; so we
must not be surprised if the "Secrets in
Physic and Surgery," published among the
other secrets in this volume now before us,
contain odd information. Here is a nice cure
for a quartan ague, which might tickle a
patient's stomach sooner than his fancy:
"Seven wig-lice of the bed, wrapt in a great
grape husk, and swallowed down alive before
the fit." Another cure is effected when the
patient eats the parings of his nails and toes,
mingled with wax. There are many remedies
against the Plague; but that one which is
recommended as "The Best Thing against the
Plague" is for a man to wash his mouth with
vinegar and water before he goes out, drinking
also a spoonful of the liquor; then to press
his nose and stop his breath, so that "by the
vapour and steam held in your mouth, the
brain be moistened." In the following prescription
we believe entirely: "For Melancholy.
It is no small remedy to cure melancholy, to
rub your body all over with nettles."

Book Five contains secrets for beautifying
the human body. The following receipt,
which comes first, for giving people a
substantial look, seems to be somewhat too
efficacious to be often tried: "To make men
fat. If you mingle with the fat of a lizard,
saltpetre and cummin and wheat-meal, hens
fatted with this meat will be so fat, that men
that eat of them, will eat until they burst."
A degree of fatness in hens equal to this will
never be communicated by our degenerate
modern agriculturists. For the hair-dyes,
favoured by our forefathers, we cannot,
however, say much, for we must differ in taste
very decidedly. Recipes are given for obtaining,
not only black, but white hair, yellow
hair, red hair, and "To make your hair seem
GREEN." Nobody in these days will use a
course of the distilled water of capers to make
his hair look like a meadow; and even, if
anybody among us, too fastidious as we now
are, wanted yellow hair, we do not think that
he would consent to rub into his head for
that purpose honey and the yolk of eggs.
There are also in this part of the work some
ungallant recommendations of substances,
which a man may chew in order that,
presently breathing near a lady's cheek, he may
discolour it, and so detect her artifice, if she
should happen to be painted. Among "secrets
for beautifying the body," we cannot but
think this also indicative of an odd taste:
"If you would change the colour of children's
eyes, you shall do it thus: with the ashes
of the small nut-shells, with oil you must
anoint the forepart of their head; it will
make the whites of children's eyes black; DO IT
OFTEN!"

Concerning wine, it is worth knowing, that
to cure a man of drunkenness, you should put
eels into his wine. Delightful dreams will
visit the couch of him who has eaten
moderately, for supper, of a horse's tongue, and
taken balm for salad. This is "A means to
make a man sleep sweetly," which we recommend
to the attention of all restless people,
who have proper faith in their forefathers.
As we have passed over a good many pages,
and come to the "secrets of asses," we may
put down, à propos to nothing, that "If an
ass have a stone bound to his tail he cannot
bray."

The following may be tried in a few months
by ladies in the country, who rise early on a
fine spring morning; they may thus earn the
delight of exhibiting to their friends one of
the prettiest balloon ascents that anybody
can conceive: "In May, fill an egg-shell with
May-dew, and set it in the hot sun at noon-
day, and the sun will draw it up."

The secrets of gardening, known to our
forefathers, annihilate all claim in Sir Joseph
Paxton to the commonest consideration. They
taught how to get blue roses by manuring
with indigo, or green roses by digging verdigris
about the roots. They taught the whole
art of perfuming fruit, by steeping the seeds
of the future tree in oil of spike, or rosewater
and musk. If, say our ancestors, you
would have peaches, plums, or cherries without
any stone, you have only, when the tree is a
twig, to pick out all the pith before you set
it. To get your filbert-trees to bear you
fruit all kernel, you have only to crack a nut,
and sow the kernel only, covered with a little
wool. And very much more marvellous, in
the annals of gardening, is the receipt for
getting peach-trees that bear fruit covered
with inscriptions: "When you have eaten
the peach, steep the stone two or three days
in water, and open it gently, and take the
kernel out of it (!) and write something within
the shell with an iron graver, what you please,
yet not too deep, then wrap it in paper and
set it; whatever you write in the shell,
you shall find written in the fruit." Such
shrewd things mingled with the more ordinary
knowledge of our ancestors upon affairs
of gardening.

It will be seen that for many of these
"facts" there was a "reason" close at hand.
Our forefathers were wise enough to know
that everything required properly accounting
for. Thus, for example, in "the Secrets of
Metals:"—"Some report that a candle lighted
of man's fat, and brought to the place where
the treasures are hid, will discover them with
the noise; and when it is near them it will go
out. If this be true, it ariseth from sympathy:
for fat is made of blood, and blood is the seat
of the soul and spirits, and both these are
held by the desire of silver and gold, so long
as a man lives; and therefore they trouble
the blood; so here is sympathy."

If a man would prevent hail from coming
down, he is to walk about his garden, with a
crocodile—stuffed, of course—and hang it up
in the middle. Pieces of the skin of a
hippopotamus, wherever they are buried, keep off