BATHS AND MEDICINES.

291

One approved medicine mentioned by Jesner as a cure for dotage and diseases of the brain will exemplify better than any comment the state of medicine in the sixteenth century:

"Cut off at a blow a young ram's head, and, removing the horns, boil it, skin and wool, and when it is well sodden, take out the brains and mix it with the powder of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace, and cloves, heating them over a chafing-dish, and stirring them so that they do not burn; this must be given to the patient with bread in an egg or broth for fourteen days, fasting being necessary both before and after."

Baths of medicated water were much used, and also herb fomentations applied locally. As narcotics, the country folks used possets of hempseed; richer people went to opium, or decoctions of poppy, mandrake, violets, roses, lettuce, henbane, nightshade, saffron, and willows. Sometimes the temples were anointed with the oil of poppy, mandrake, purslane, or violets. When Court intrigues robbed nobles of their rest, sacks of wormwood, henbane, hops, or roses, were placed under their pillows; Cardan says, in such cases, the patient's feet should be anointed with the fat of a dormouse, and the teeth with ears' wax of a dog, swine's gall, and hare's ears. Occasionally plasters were made of castorium, opium, and aqua vitæ, and

stuck on the temples. Fomentations were not uncommon, made of rose water and vinegar, and a little woman's milk.

To procure pleasant dreams, instead of doing a good action, weary debauchees took after supper distilled waters of balm, or the herb horse-tongue, and avoided black wines and the flesh of hares.

The cure of rusticus pudor, or mauvaise honte, when proceeding from morbid self-consciousness, pride, and shyness, was effected not by moral precepts, but by washing the face with lac virginale or litharge, or in rose, violet, and lettuce waters. Quercetan recommends the water of frogs' spawn; Scolzius, strawberry water; and Hollerius, draughts of boiled succory. Burton, accustomed, perhaps, to this student's disease, advises the sufferer to overnight anoint his face with hare's blood, and in the morning to wash it with strawberry and cowslip water, the juice of distilled lemons or cucumbers, or else the bruised kernels of peaches or roots of Aron mixed with wheat bran and baked in an oven, and then crumbled into gillyflower water. Fresh cheese curds abated the redness of a flushed face; sow-thistle roots, baked apples, preserved quince, and cummin seed, were also wholesome, if these flushes were the effect of indigestion.

For cleansing the blood Dr. Caius would have used

sow-thistle, succory, senna, endive, carduus benedictus, dandelion, hop, maidenhair, fumitory, bugloss, borage, with their decoctions, distillations, and syrups.

The diuretics were aniseed, dill, fennel, germander, and ground pine. Against flatulency the medicines were innumerable; they were gentian, valerian, dittander, pennyroyal, rue, calamint, bay leaves, rosemary, hyssop, and various spices. Such were the remedies of men, who, in spite of the mall, lived quite as long as their more learned descendants.

CHAP. XV.

REVELS AND PROGRESSES.

"She shall be loved and feared, her own shall bless her,

Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,

And hang their heads with sorrow."

Henry VIII., Act v. Sc. 4.

Elizabeth's Character. - Not intolerant. Her great Dangers. Execution of Mary Stuart.-Magnanimity. - Vanity.-Irresolution. Learning of the Age.-Historical Opinions. - Defence of Her. Traits of her Character. - Her Temper and Habits. — Anecdotes. Etiquette of the Court. -State Ceremonies. - Coin of her Reign. Royal Progresses. Their Policy. - List of them. Visit to Kenilworth. Laneham's Description. — Coventry Games. Hunting and Banquets. Visit to Cambridge.Leicester and Cecil. — Disputations. — Latin Speech. - Visit to Oxford. English Play. - Elizabeth's Delight in the Students' Enthusiasm. Visit to Norwich. Revels in Gray's Inn. — King

of Misrule.

-

- Mask and Banquet.- Queen's Pleasure at the Mask. - Twelfth Night. - Temple Revels. - Romance and Beauty of the Elizabethan Masks.-Tournament at Whitehall. - Allegory and Mask. Sir Philip Sidney. - The Children of Desire. - Laws of the Tourney.—Surrender of the Championship.-Tournaments. Street Processions.

ELIZABETH was nursed by adversity, and in misfortune's bitter school proved an apt scholar. Her religion strengthened and rooted itself amid persecutions that had led her to

CHARACTER OF ELIZABETH.

295

found her faith on something deeper than mere habit or uninquiring belief. She gathered experience in three Courts, and suffered little from flattery, though few were more deserving it. No wonder that the Protestantism, for which she had so often risked her life, became the great principle of her reign, and the motive of all her actions. Interest and principle both conduced to make her the Defender of the Protestant Faith throughout the world, for upon its existence depended her power, and even her life.

She began by degrees with all the caution and deliberation of her character: her first councils were half Protestant, half Popish: and the Roman bishops were undisturbed in their sees. Soon she weeded out the first, and removed the second: but only by degrees was she driven by necessity into severity against unremitting and fanatic enemies. From the first year to the last of her reign we find her equally the head of an armed Protestant league. She assisted the Scotch reformers, and those of France and Holland; while refugees from France and the Low Countries flocked continually to the free land.

As danger thickened around her, she soon found that there could be no toleration afforded to priests who headed rebellions and encouraged assassins.

Henry IV. fell by Ravaillac, the Prince of Orange by Balthazar, the cries of St. Bartholomew's Night reached