Page:Fumifugium - John Evelyn (1661).djvu/29

Rh it is this which diffuses and spreads a Yellownesse upon our choycest Pictures and Hangings: which does this mischief at home; is Avernus to Fowl, and kills our Bees and Flowers abroad, suffering nothing in our Gardens to bud, display themselves, or ripen; so as our Anemonies and many other choycest Flowers, will by no Industry be made to blow in London, or the Precincts of it, unlesse they be raised on a Hot-bed, and govern'd with extraordinary Artifice to accellerate their springing, imparting a bitter and ungrateful Tast to those few wretched Fruits, which never arriving to their desired maturity, seem, like the Apples of Sodome, to fall even to dust, when they are but touched. Not therefore to be forgotten, is that which was by many observ'd, that in the year when New-castle was besieg'd and blocked up in our late Wars, so as through the great Dearth and Scarcity of Coales, those fumous Works many of them were either left off, or spent but few Coales in comparison to what they now use: Divers Gardens and Orchards planted even in the very heart of London, (as in particular my Lord Marquesse of Hertfords in the Strand, my Lord Bridgewaters, and some others about Barbican) were observed to bear such plentiful and infinite quantities of Fruits, as they never produced the like either before or since, to their great astonishment: but it was by the Owners rightly imputed to the penury of Coales, and the little Smoake, which they took notice to infest them that year: For there is a virtue in the Aer, to penetrate, alter, nourish, yea and to multiply Plants and Fruits, without which no vegetable could possibly thrive; but as the Poet.

So as it was not ill said by Paracelsus, that of all things, Aer only could be truly affirm'd to have Life, seeing to all things it gave Life. Argument sufficient to demonstrate, how prejudicial it is to the Bodies of men; for that can never be Aer fit for them to breath in, where nor Fruits, nor Flowers do ripen, or come to a seasonable perfection.

I have strangely wondred, and not without some just indignation, when the South-wind has been gently breathing, to have sometimes beheld that stately House and Garden belonging to my Lord of Northumberland, even as far as White-hall and Westminster, wrapped in a horrid Cloud of this Smoake, issuing from a Brew-house or two contiguous to that noble Palace: so as Rh