meat and beer. In the evening, of all those thousands collected, not one is to be seen “drunk and disorderly,” and not a voice distinguishably raised in anger or dispute! How far different would be the scene in London, Edinburgh, or Dublin!
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Prague.—The Cathedral.
BRITANNIA’S SMELLING BOTTLE.
Did the reader ever ask himself, as he passed a perfumer’s shop,—How are these delicate odours that strike so sweetly upon the sense taken prisoners? What chains can we forge fine enough to enslave the delicious breath of the rose? what trap can we set sufficiently subtile to seize the odour of the violet? By what process do we manage to “bottle” the hawthorn-scented gale?
If the perfumer (guessing his thoughts) were to say “The most successful trap we set is a lump of fat,” possibly our reader would open his eyes very wide, and exclaim incredulously, What possible affinity can there be between so gross an animal product, and so volatile an essence? Verily, good reader, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy; and this is one of them. Possibly, if we were to tell you that the perfumer salts down his rose-leaves in order to preserve their odour, just as the meat-curer salts down his pork, you would be still incredulous; yet, verily, we speak the words of truth and soberness, as we shall presently show you.
The cultivation of flowers for the manufacture of perfumes is chiefly carried on in the south of France, in the plains watered by the river Var; and now that Louis Napoleon has acquired both banks of that river, he may be said to have taken possession of the scent-bottle of Europe. Those who have visited Cannes and its neighbourhood, must have seen the flower-farms bright with a thousand brilliant dyes; and at Grasse, again, the plantations of orange trees, which perfume the air. To secure the odours of those flowers is the care of the proprietors, so that thousands in far-off capitals shall be able to enjoy the perfume that otherwise would waste its sweetness upon the desert air. There are various modes of accomplishing this; but the principal one, for the more delicate flowers, such as the jasmine, the violet, tube rose, and orange, is by what we will call the fat-trap.
Those who know anything of chemistry are well aware that carbon, in the shape of charcoal, possesses an astonishing affinity for all kinds of odours—a property which the physician avails himself of to absorb the foul smells of the hospital. The hydrocarbons, such as beef and mutton fat, highly purified, possess a similar absorptive power, which is taken advantage of by the flower farmer, to take and secure the fleeting breath of his flowers. Let us suppose, for instance, that it is the season for violets. The proprietor has already prepared thousands of square wooden frames, the rims of which are, say, three inches in depth; in the middle of this frame is inserted a sheet of glass, and the whole series of frames are constructed so as to fit one upon the other. Upon both sides of the glass a film of finely purified fat is spread, to the depth of a quarter of an inch, and upon this fat the violet flowers just picked are lightly spread. Thus it will be seen the