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land, and the Mistress of the great Parliament thereof, happiness to every one that followeth the right way, and believes in God, and is so directed.

This premised, we have heard from more than one of the comers and goers from that country, that thou hast seized our Armenian servant, a person of great esteem. We sent him to thee to compose a difference between us and thee, and we wrote to thee concerning him, that thou shouldst use him well. Then after this we heard that thou hadst set him at liberty. But for what reason didst thou take him, and for what reason didst thou set him at liberty? Hath he exceeded any covenant, or hath he made any covenant with thee and broke it? We had not sent him unto thee but upon the account of our knowledge and assurance of his understanding and integrity; and when he resolved upon his journey into that country, we gave directions to dispatch some of our affairs. Wherefore we wrote unto thee concerning him, and said, If thou hast any necessity or business with us, he will convey it to us from thee. And we said unto thee, speak with him, which if it should be, what thou talkest about with him will come to us, without addition or diminu

tion.

As for what our servant Alkaid Ali Abdo'llah did to thy servant the Christian, by God we know nothing of it, nor gave him any permission as to any thing that passed between them. And in the instant that we heard from him that he had taken thy man, we commanded him to set him at liberty, and he set him at liberty forthwith, out of hand; and from that we never shewed any favour to Alkaid Ali, nor was our mind right towards him till he died.

Our Christian servant, the merchant (Balih), told us that thou hadst a mind to an ostrich, and we gave him two, a male and a female, which shall come to thee if God will. And lo, O Secretary! the goods of our servant, much esteemed with us, when he cometh he shall bring what is with him, if it please God. And we are in expectation of thy messenger, the ambassador; and if he comes, he shall see nothing from us but what is fair, and we will deliver to him the Christians, and do what he pleases, if

God will. Wherefore be kind to our servant with respect.

Written the first of the glorious
Ramadan, in the year 1125.

SABINA.

Morning-Scenes in the Dressing-room of a rich Roman Lady.

(From the German of Böttiger.)

SCENE I.

Sabina comes from her Bed-chamber into her Dressing-room-Restaurations-Skaphion brings the Asses' Milk-Phiale the Paint-Stimmi the black Eye-tincture-Mastiche the Teeth.

IN the Royal Museum at Portici, among the immense numbers of ancient paintings brought from Herculaneum and Pompeii, there are four little pieces which have attracted particular attention, for this reason, that they were not, like the others, painted upon the wall, but attached to it separately, a circumstance which implies that, by their possessors, fifteen hundred years ago, they had been regarded as of something more than common value. The third of these pieces represents the dressing-chamber of an Herculanean lady. One of the virtuosi, who have described the curiosities of Portici, speaks of it in these terms: "A young woman is standing among her attendants; one of these dresses her hair, another sits by her, a third stands near; they are all elegantly attired." After having bestowed a more accurate attention upon this beautiful and nearly uninjured painting as engraved in the Pitture D'Erculano,* I am inclined to suppose that the following would be a more correct description of it. It is a family piece, representing a mother with her two beautiful daughters, whose features sufficiently indicate their relation to her. The mother is seated upon a chair somewhat elevated, with a footstool before it, of the kind always mentioned, as constituting a principle article of ornamental furniture in the female apartments of these

* Pitture D'Erculano, t. iv. tab. xliii.

times,-adorned with carving, gilding, coverlids, and cushions, all of the most costly execution and quality. With her right hand she leans tenderly upon her younger daughter, whose face is turned to her with an affectionate expression. On the other side stands the elder daughter, occupied with a female slave, who is arranging something in the back part of her hair. In other respects her dress is already finished, the hair is encircled with a double band, in the front it is fastened with long dressing-pins, whose heads alone are visible; the locks behind float in careless ringlets over the shoulders. The whole dress, with its exquisite border, the ear-rings, armlets, &c. shew that the day is that of a festival. It may be, that the scene represents a bride in the attire of her wedding-day. Near her, upon a beautiful little table, a white and blue band lies beneath a dressing-box, together with a few green leaves, probably meant for an offering-garland. At the foot of the table there stands a slender gentlycurved ewer. The whole gives us a view of a female toilette of that age and country, in which the most agreeable mixture was exhibited of Grecian taste with Roman splendour.

We hear much and often of the extravagant and costly dresses of the Roman ladies of that age, when the spoils and luxuries of a plundered world were all collected in the imperial city; when the whole earth was ruled by the proud Romans, and these by their yet prouder wives. Many of our readers, we doubt not, will consider a peep into the morning and toilette hours of a lady of that time, as likely to furnish nearly as much amusement as the perusal of a heroic romance, founded on the manners of our tilting and tournaying forefathers, or a tale of ghosts and goblins in the Radcliff taste. They may perhaps remember something of a description of this sort in the travels of Anacharsis; but there, they will recollect, they saw only the modes and fashions of the retired and domestic matrons of Athens. In Rome, things wore a quite different aspect. The most luxurious lady of an English Nabob, the most expensive Knesin of St Petersburgh, however extravagant her wishes may be, can never hope for a a moment to rival the profuse splendour which was daily commanded by the wife of one of those Roman

knights or senators, who robbed whole countries, who saw kings at their feet, who brought hundreds of slaves of every complexion from their subjugated provinces, to administer to the pomp of their Roman insula, or their Italian villas.

A whole regiment of female slaves, each having her own particular department in the great work of the toilette or the wardrobe, attended on the nod of the Domina; for by that name was she called by her domestics, no less than by her lovers and dependants. That great painter of manners, Lucian, has given us a true and lively description of the levee of one of these ladies, which we shall begin with translating.

"Could any one see this fair creature," says Lucian, "at the moment when she awakes from her sleep, he would have no great difficulty in believing him to be in company with a monkey or baboon,-according to all authorities a bad omen to begin the day with. It is for this reason she takes especial care that no male eyes shall see her at this hour. Now she takes her seat amidst a circle of officious old hags and dainty waiting damsels, whose skill and dexterity are all zealously engaged to call from their grave the dead charms of their mistress. To wash sleep from the eyes with a basin of fresh well-water, and then set alertly and merrily about the management of household concernswhat a tasteless old-fashioned idea! No, the first concerns to be attended to are the salves, and powders, and essences, and lotions! The room has the appearance of a millinery shop. Every slave has her own department at the toilette: one bears a silver washhand-basin, another a silver pot-dechambre, another a silver ewer, others hold up as many looking-glasses and boxes as the apartment will admit of; and in all these, nothing but Deceit, and Treachery, and Falsehood-in one, teeth and gums-in another, eyelashes and eyebrows, and such like trumpery. But the most, both of art and time, are devoted to the hair. Some, that have the rage for turning their naturally black locks into white and yellow, besmear them all over with salves, and then expose them to be sucked in and burned in under the sun's rays at noontide. Others are contented to keep them as black as they are; but they

Sabina.

lavish the whole substance of their husbands upon them, so that the whole of Arabia breathes from the hair of one of them. Burning lotions are kept boiling on the fire to crimp and twist what nature has made smooth and sleek. The hair of one must be brought down from the head, and taught to lie close to the eyebrows, lest the Cupids, I suppose, should have too much play-ground on the forehead; but behind, the locks float over the back in bundles of vanity."

But is it not possible that Lucian has been too hard upon the poor ladies of his age? Lucian was a great satirist, but he had so much wit, that we, for our parts, do not suspect him of having had frequent recourse to caricature. Were it necessary, however, to bring any authority in confirmation of his, we might point out abundant passages, at least as strong as the above, in the most reverend fathers of the church, particularly from the Pedagogus of Clement of Alexandria, but most of all from that invaluable mine of information, Tertullian's famous treatise on the Dress of Women. But here too, we well know that our authorities would be represented as suspicious, and the over austerity of these divines would be said to have incapacitated them from giving a just account of things as they stood. Our fair readers, however, must ascribe it to their own well-known spirit of incredulity, that we trouble them even with the threatening of such formidable citations.

Our Domina-without injury to all the other ladies, Roman and not Roman, who bore the same name, she may be called Sabina-at her first awakening is any thing but an amiable object. Perhaps Lucian's similitude of the she-baboon may not be far amiss. But you shall judge for yourselves. According to the custom of her times, she had placed on her face over-night, a plaster of bread soaked in asses' milk. The inventor of this embrocation, by means of which the skin was rendered very soft and white, was the illustrious Poppæa, the wife of Nero, and it had preserved her name. During the night, part of the beauty-plaster had been sucked into, and part of it had dried upon, her face, so that Sabina's physiognomy re

Amores, T. ii. p. 440. ed. Wetsten.

[Oct

sembles, in the morning, a wall with
ill-mixed and bursting plaster,-and
so indeed the great satirist Juvenal has
described it.

Pane tumet facies
"Interea fœda aspectu ridendaque multo

Tandem aperit vultum et tectoria prima re-
Incipit agnosci."
ponit,

fact that, in addition to all this, our If we take into our consideration the Domina had laid aside, with the rest items of the "human face divine," of her dress, several not unimportant such, for example, as the eyebrows, the teeth, the hair, &c. and that therefore she probably bore much more likeness to the death's head, over which model of the Venus of Praxiteles,—we Hamlet moralized, than to the living shall, perhaps, upon the whole, be forced to admit that Lucian's comparimost gallant that he might have seson of the monkey was, if not the lected, the most graphic, piquant, and just. In truth, old Ennius had observed the same likeness several centuries before;

"Simia quam similis turpissima Bestia nobis."

what is, properly speaking, the dressBefore, however, Sabina comes into ing-room, her own body-damsel, the much-teased Smaragdis, has already performed certain little services about her person, the signal for which, from these lazy lords and ladies of the world, was a crack of the fingers."

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all, in the famous question put into the There is not much of caricature, after mouth of a Roman lady by Juvenal" Is expressed openly in words, was the ruling then a slave a man ?" That idea, if not principle of much of their conduct-it was slaves, not by language, but by nods and one part of this to give directions to their gestures. The pious Clement of Alexandria, for this reason, mentions the cracking of the fingers (οι δια των δακτύλων ψοφοι, των in which slavery brought men down to the οικετων προκλητικα) as instances of the mode condition of beasts. The digitis concrepare was a common signal to the servant in waiting; but its most usual meaning was, that he or she should bring the pot-de-chambre. It is thus, that in the Trimalchio of Petronius we read, "Trimalchio homo lautissimus digitos concrepuit ad quos signum spado ludenti matellam supposuit. "" In one of Martial's epigrams, we read of a Castratus, who was, it seems, skilful in this part of his vocation, "delicatæ sciscitator

At last she enters the dressing-room, where her arrival has been perhaps for hours expected by a regiment of slaves and attendants. Her first nod is to the slave that watches the door, (the Janitrix, as she is called,) and then she asks after the billets-doux, bills, letters, messages, milliners, &c. that have arrived before she has got up. But who might be admitted to gaze with uninitiated eyes upon such a scene as this? Sabina has read the precepts of the great master in the art of love, and she forgets not his precepts.

"Non tamen expositas mensâ deprendat

amator

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urinæ." In another, we have the vessel itself introduced, speaking thus:

"Dum poscor strepitu digitorum et verna moratur,

O quoties pellex culcita facta mea est."

Lib. xiv. 119. The only relic of this barbarity seems to be perceived in the after-dinner fashions of the English gentlemen. The employment of slaves, however, in such ministrations, was shocking even to the ancients. We read in Plutarch (see Laconica Apophthegmata in variis, 35. tom. i. pt. ii. p. 934, Wyttenbach,) of a young Spartan slave who killed himself from the feeling of this degradation; and a serious debate is to be found in Arrian, (i. 2. 8.) whether or no a slave should submit to it. In another passage of the same work, we hear of the emperors having a servant expressly T Aadave. This abominable degradation was revived in modern France, where a court lady of high rank took her title from the Cabinet d'aisance. See Soulavie's Memoires Historiques du regne de Louis XVI., vol. iii. p. 48.

Cur mihi nota tuo caussa est candoris in ore? Claude forem thalami: quid rude prodis opus ?

Multa viros nescire decet. Pars maxima Offendat, si non interiora tegas.”

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the admission of any young gentleman Sabina is aware what consequences she guards effectually against it. She to this privacy might produce, and remembers the story of Psyche, who put love to flight by the injudicious introduction of the torch.

Scarcely has the Domina entered the numerous circle of her damsels and the zeal of rivalry, betakes her to her tire-women, ere each of them, with part. As of old, among the Egyptians, each part of the human body had its peculiar physician, so that the eardoctor, the eye-doctor, the tooth-doctor, the clyster-doctor, the foot-doctor-each had his own little unapproachable division of the general victim to deal with, as it might seem good to his fancy,-here too the surface of Sabina is portioned out among a vast variety of petty governors. Every bit of the smoothened, polished, painted, pranked body, thanks a different artist for its ornament. The slaves are arranged into troops and sub-divisions like a legion.*

The first file consists of the painters, the layers-on of white and red, the stainers of the eye-brows, and the scrubbers of the teeth. The whole materials made use of by this class, were combined under the general Greek term of Cosmetic, for the rage of the Roman ladies was in these days to call every thing by Greek names, exactly as it has been the rage of German ladies, in our own times, to call every thing by French. From the lover, down to the tooth-brush, every thing had its endearing appellation in Greek. The maids occupied with this great department were called kosmeta. The first who begins to operate is Scaphion, who, with a basin of lukewarm asses milk, washes from the face the nocturnal incrustation of bread. This mass was called καταπλασμα

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Sabina.

the soaps and essences which were applied after its removal, σμίγματα. To enumerate all the names of these would require a treatise, and a dull one; the ancients, so far as chemical skill was not absolutely necessary, were nowise inferior to the moderns in this species of invention. Varro, a contemporary of Cicero, calls one of these salves by which wrinkles were removed, tentipellum-humorously liking it to the stretchers used by tanners. The second slave is Phialeher care is the pallet alone, it is her's to clothe with white and red the clean washen and smoothed visage of the Domina. Before, however, she presumes to apply her colours, she breathes on a metallic mirror, and gives it to her lady, who smells the breath. The state of the saliva of the maiden is by this ascertained-a circumstance of mighty import in the mixing of the colours.*

The ointments and colours, and the whole apparatus wherewith, as Hamlet says, they disguised God's handiwork, was contained in two caskets of ivory and crystal work, which formed, in these days, the chief ornaments of the female toilette, and were known by the Greek name, Narthekia. Our fair readers may be excused for wishing to have a glimpse of the interior of these repositories; but let our gentlemen take warning from the fate of Peeping Tom of Coventry." may, however, mention this much in We general, that with the exception of the ancient and saturnian white lead, I which was then quite as fashionable as it is now, the greater part of the ancient paints were derived from the comparatively innocent animal and vegetable kingdoms. The Roman ladies were in this respect wiser than ours.

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[Oct. While Phiale is busy with her pencils and pallet, a third slave, whose nom-de-toilette is Stimmi, is getting ready a little pot with pounded black lead (which they called, very appropriately, fuligo) and water. other hand she has a very delicate In her pencil or needle, for laying on this tincture; for in those days the Greek use of methods for increasing the lustre and Roman ladies universally made and depth of their eye-lashes and eyebrows, very similar to the surmé still employed for the same purposes by the Oriental fair. The common mixture of the Greek ri, an eye-brow), and was called Stibium (a slight alteration it might either be formed, as we have already described it, from lead, or from antimony or bismuth, the very materials still in fashion among the eas

terns.

pharon (for this too was another name Stimmi, with her calliblesoon transfers Sabina into some resemfor it, and the most elegant of all), blance of the ox-eyed hero of Homer.* The eye-brows also are delicately touched. the dentist of the toilette. She applies Next comes Mastiche to her post, to the Domina that Chian martix from which she derives her own name, and which was the customary dentifrice of the day. From the corner of her beautiful mastix-box she next produurine of an infant, and a golden shell, ces a little onyx phial, containing the stone, which, from the mixture of a decontaining finely pounded pumice

Juvenal's:
* The best description of this operation is

Illa supercilium madida fuligine tactum
Obliquâ producita cu, pingitque trementes
Attollens oculos.

Petronius also speaks of "Supercilia pro-
ferre de pyxide." What Juvenal calls the
obliqua acus is called by Galen, in speaking
fourva yuvaines) μnλn, i. e. specillum.
of the ladies of his time, (άι οσημέραι τιμ

The word mastix itself (usu, maxthis practice. The substitute of the rich, illa, macheoire) shews how universal was when any substitute was used, was a silver picker spina argentea. (See Petron. c. 33. p. 128.) The poor then, as they still do in the east, were obliged to employ a false species of mastich, the attractilis gummifera Linn. In old times the tree itself, however, was sedulously cultivated both in Italy and remarks concerning it, and the trade arising the Levant. Sonnini has several curious out of it. See Voyage en Grece et Turquie vol. ii. p. 126.

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