An excellent specimen this, of a Compound as distinguished from a Simple; of the sophistication, and of the meticulous personal cleanliness, of people of the Borgian Era. To cure a man of Envy, says this mage, keep him in the fresh air, hang carbuncles and jacinths and sapphires on his neck, let him wear a ring made of ass-hoof and smell to hyssop and sweet lilies. Messer Giambattista Porta’s ninth Book teaches how to make women beautiful. There was a fashion which continued the forehead to the middle of the skull; and a depilatory is recommended made of quicklime four ounces, and orpiment two ounces, boiled until a hen’s feather dipped into it is bared. This frightful compound must not long remain on the skin; and the burns should be dressed with the gum of aspen-bark (_Populus Tremula_) and oil of roses or of violets. Or, hair may be removed by fomentation with hot water, plucking out with nippers one by one, and anointing the holes with a saturated solution of saltpetre, or with oil of brimstone or vitriol, the process being repeated once a year. Where hair is only thin and downy, the roots of wild hyacinth rubbed on will keep it back. To dye the hair yellow, (in imitation of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, whose beautiful yellow hair was much admired,) add enough honey to soften the lees of white wine and keep the hair wet with this all night. Then bruise roots of celandine and greater-clivers-madder, mix them with oil of cummin seed, box-shavings, and saffron; and keep this on the head for four and twenty hours, when it should be washed off with a lye of cabbage-stalks and ashes of rye-straw. To make the hair grow it should be washed in the liquid that first distils from honey by the fire: or it should be anointed with an unguent made of marsh-mallow bruised in hog’s grease, boiled long in wine, added to bruised cummin seed, mastic, yolk of egg, boiled again, and strained through linen. To make hair thick and curly, boil maidenhair with smallage seed in wine and oil; or roots of daffydillies, or dwarf-elder, boiled with wine and oil. Water, in which the bulbous tops of lilies have been boiled, makes the skin fair: and corrosive sublimate and cerusa (white lead) makes the face white and shining. For sunburn, white of egg and sugar-candy on the face at night, washed off in barley-water in the morning, is prescribed: and a clear skin is to be had by rubbing with the rind or bruised seeds of melons. It will be obvious that there were “plain” as well as “coloured” women in the Borgian Era; _i.e._, those who went about their duty (of cultivating their charms) in a wholesome way, and those who used violent and nasty methods.