Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/298

 precious of metals, has been held in high esteem. In Carthage, before Cato had carried into act his oft-repeated threat, the belles and fops had devised some art, now lost, to change their natural black locks to a golden yellow.

Rome under the empire was seized with the same mania. When dyeing did not suffice, quite a trade was started with the fair-haired German tribes beyond the Alps, who sold their locks to Latin merchants, to be worn on the heads of Roman dandies. All through the Middle Ages, we discover proofs of the same taste.

The Spanish and Italian ladies of the fifteenth century dampened their black tresses with muriatic acid, and sate in the sun to bleach it to the coveted yellow. Therefore Don Quixote describes his Dulcinea as having "hair the color of gold," and Dante commences one of his Canzone with the line—

"Io miro i crespi e gli biondi capegli."

Shakspeare in his Sonnets tells us such was the value of yellow hair in his day, that even that of the dead was cut off and sold:—

"Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away, To live a second life on second head;  Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay," etc.

At times, fine gold thread was worn in place of hair. Thus, history informs us that when Charles the Bold,