“Cows (I mean that whole species of horned beasts) are more commonly black than _Red_ in England. ’Tis for this reason that they have a greater value for Red Cow’s Milk than for Black Cow’s Milk. Whereas in France we esteem the Black Cow’s Milk, because _Red_ Cows are more common with us.”[263] Speaking of the Green Walk, St James’s Park, Tom Brown says: “There were a cluster of senators talking of state affairs, and the price of corn and cattle, and were disturbed with the noisy Milk folk crying: A can of Milk, Ladies; a can of _Red_ Cow’s Milk, sirs?”[264] The preference for the _Red_ Cow’s milk may, however, have a more remote origin, namely, from the ordinance of the law contained in Numbers xix. 2, where a _red_ heifer is enjoined to be sacrificed as a purification for sin. Hence, _Red_ Cow’s milk is particularly recommended in old prescriptions and panacea, as, for instance, in the following receipt of “a Cock water for a Consumption and Cough of the Lunges:”-- “Take a running cock and pull him alive, then kill him and cutt him in pieces and take out his intrailes and wipe him cleane, breake the bones, then put him into an ordinary still with a pottle of sack and a pottle of _Red Cow’s Milk_,” &c., &c.[265] The Red Cow, in Bow Street, was the sign of a noted tavern, (afterwards called the Red Rose,) which stood at the corner of Rose Alley. It was when going home from this tavern that Dryden was cudgelled by bravoes, hired by Lord Rochester, for some remarks in Lord Mulgrave’s Essay on Satire, in the composition of which Dryden had assisted his lordship. The king offered £50, and a free pardon, but “Black Will with a cudgel,” to whom Lord Rochester had intrusted the task of thrashing the laureate, showed that there was such a thing as honour amongst rogues, and did not betray him for the king’s £50. In all probability, however, he received a larger sum from his lordship. In Dryden’s old age, Pope, then a boy, came here to look at the great man whose fame in after years he was to equal if not to eclipse. This tavern was the famous mart for libels and lampoons; one Julyan, a drunken dissipated “secretary to the Muses,” as he calls himself, was the chief manufacturer. Near Marlborough, Wilts, there is an alehouse having the sign of the RED COW, with the following rhyme:-- “The Red Cow Gives good Milk now.” That under a BROWN COW at Oldham is still more sublime:-- “This Cow gives such Liquor, ’Twould puzzle a Viccar (_sic_.)”