Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/202

 would not exchange a quart of it for a gallon of the water of the Queen of Hungary, which, in the last century, was the most famous cosmetic lotion in the world. And what was it?

Nothing but tincture of rosemary, made with the best brandy and carefully distilled.

The most serene queen Donna Isabella of Hungary, however, set great store by it. She wrote the receipt for it carefully in her Book of Hours, and added this note: "I, Isabella, Queen of Hungary, when seventy-two years old, gouty and infirm, used a flask of this water, and it had such a wondrous effect that I seemed to grow young and beautiful. So the King of Poland wished to marry me, and I did not refuse him, out of love to our Lord, who I doubt not sent me this flask by the hands of an angel in the garb of the old hermit from whom I had it."

How many more flasks the old lady used, and how many more husbands she felt in conscience obliged to accept, we have been unable to ascertain.

Some of the very best washes for the complexion can be made of articles which are in every household. The celebrated Mr. Wilson, of London, recommends constantly in his practice, as of great efficacy in whitening and clearing the skin and complexion of that "muddiness," or shade which is so common, lotions of citric acid. Now citric acid is simply the acid of lemons, and