They were in the form of a modern pocket-book, the leaves of asses’ skin, or covered with a composition, upon which a silver or leaden style would inscribe memoranda capable of erasure.]

[Footnote 11:  A box containing such written rolls is represented in one of the pictures exhumed at Pompeii.]

[Footnote 12:  See note to Vol.  I. p. 5.]

[Footnote 13:  The ink of old manuscripts is generally a thick solid substance, and sometimes stands in relief upon the paper.  The red ink is generally a body-colour of great brilliancy.]

[Footnote 14:  This was, in fact, a realization of the traditional representations of the Flight into Egypt, in which the Virgin, having the Saviour in her lap, is always depicted seated on an ass, which is led by Joseph.]

[Footnote 15:  See Article Ancient and Modern Saturnalia, in this Volume.]

[Footnote 16:  In the romances and poems of the Middle Ages, the heroines are generally praised for the abundance and beauty of their “yellow hair”—­

Her yellow haire was braided in a tresse
Behinde her backe, a yarde longe, I guesse.

CHAUCER’S Knight’s Tale.

Queen Elizabeth had yellow hair, hence it became the fashion at her court, and ladies dyed their hair of the Royal colour.  But this dyeing the hair yellow may be traced to the classic era.  Galen tells us that in his time women suffered much from headaches, contracted by standing bare-headed in the sun to obtain this coveted tint, which others attempted by the use of saffron.  Bulwer, in his “Artificiall Changeling,” 1653, says—­“The Venetian women at this day, and the Paduan, and those of Verona, and other parts of Italy, practice the same vanitie, and receive the same recompense for their affectation, there being in all those cities open and manifest examples of those who have undergone a kind of martyrdome, to render their haire yellow.”]

[Footnote 17:  That is, carriages of the modern form, and such as became common toward the end of Elizabeth’s reign; but waggons and chares, covered with tapestry, and used by ladies for journeys, may be seen in illuminated MSS. of the fourteenth century.  There is a fine example in the Loutterell Psalter, published in “Vetusta Monumenta.”]

[Footnote 18:  The use of censers or firepans to “sweeten” houses by burning coarse perfumes is noted by Shakespeare.  His commentator, Steevens, points out a passage in a letter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who when keeping Mary Queen of Scots under his surveillance, notes “That her Majesty was to be removed for 5 or 6 dayes to clense her chamber, being kept very unclenly.”  That annoyances of a very disagreeable kind were constantly felt, he instances in a passage from the Memoir of Anne, Countess of Dorset, who relates that a noble party were infested with insects not now to be named, though named plainly by the lady, and all this “by sitting in Sir Thomas Erskine’s chamber.”]