What in the ancient use of saffron is most discordant with our taste at present, is the employing it as a perfume. Not only were halls, theatres, and courts, through which one wished to diffuse an agreeable smell, strewed with this plant[475], but it entered into the composition of many spirituous extracts, which retained the same scent; and these costly smelling waters were often made to flow in small streams, which spread abroad their much-admired odour[476]. Luxurious people even moistened or filled with them all those things with which they were desirous of surprising their guests in an agreeable manner[477], or with which they ornamented their apartments. From saffron, with the addition of wax and other ingredients, the Greeks as well as the Romans prepared also scented salves, which they used in the same manner as our ancestors their balsams[478]. Notwithstanding the fondness which the ancients showed for the smell of saffron, it does not appear that in modern times it was ever much esteemed. As a perfume, it would undoubtedly be as little relished at present as the greater part of the dishes of Apicius, fricassees of sucking puppies[479], sausages, and other parts of swine, which one could not even mention with decency in genteel company[480]; though it certainly has the same scent which it had in the time of Ovid, and although our organs of smelling are in nothing different from those of the Greeks and the Romans. From parts of the world to them unknown, we have, however, obtained perfumes which far excel any with which they were acquainted. We have new flowers, or, at least, more perfect kinds of flowers long known, which, improved either by art or by accident, are superior in smell to all those in the gardens of the Hesperides, of Adonis and Alcinous, so much celebrated. We have learned the art of mixing perfumes with oils and salts, in such a manner as to render them more volatile, stronger, and more pleasant; and we know how to obtain essences such as the ancient voluptuaries never smelt, and for which they would undoubtedly have given up their saffron. The smelling-bottles and perfumes which are often presented to our beauties, certainly far excel that promised by Catullus to a friend, with the assurance that his mistress had received it from Venus and her Cupids, and that when he smelt it he would wish to become all nose: Nam unguentum dabo quod meæ puellæ Donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque, Quod tu quom olfacies, deos rogabis, Totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum.