Flag-fan, from Vatican (a glass vase) 98 Banner-fan, from ivory diptich 99 Ghost-fan, Malay Archipelago 106 Fan of Ferrara, or Duck’s-foot 107 Fragments of Fan from Château de Pierre 109 Small Rigid Fans, 1590 109 Feather-fan, Milan 110 Diagram of parts of Folding-fan 116 Rigid Screen of Bologna, 1590 127 Fan of Rice-straw, Fifteenth Century 138 Dimensions of Fans, 1550-1780 148 Japanese Lady’s Court-fan 175 Long-handled Feather-fan 176 Ostrich-feather Folding-fan, Amsterdam 196 Flag-fan, Titian 204 Ivory Fan, Madras, Nineteenth Century 231 Plaited Fan 232 Hide-fan, from Benin 271 Queen Kapiolani’s Fan 272 From a Chinese Screen, Victoria and Albert Museum 299 [Illustration: A Concert. Dutch, 1720-30, given by the Duke of Cobury to Princess Victoria (afterwards Queen) in 1836, from the collection of Fans at Gotha. H.R.H. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll.] CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN AND USES OF THE FAN In the beginning, before the human advent, when the earth was peopled only by the Immortals, a bright son was born to Aurora, whose soft and agreeable breath was as honey in the mouth of the gods, and the beating of whose gossamer wings imparted a delicious coolness to the air, moderating the heat of summer, and providing the first suggestion of, and occasion for, the dainty little plaything we have under consideration, somewhat waggishly described as a kind of wind instrument, not, perhaps, so much to be played _upon_ as to be played _with_, and invaluable as assisting to follow out the wisest of the Sage’s maxims when he bids us keep cool. This delicate toy, this airy creation of gauze, ivory, and paint, frail and fragile almost as the flowers kissed by Aurora’s son, endowed apparently with the gift of perpetual youth, may claim a lineage older than the Pyramids; having its origin and being in the infancy of the world, before the birth of history, in that golden age when life was a perpetual summer, and care was not, when all was concord and harmony, and old age, long protracted, was dissolved in a serene slumber, and wafted to the mansions of the gods, the regions of eternal love and enjoyment.