Page:Under the Sun.djvu/332

308 presses odor elsewhere than in Asia and Africa, and I can keep within “Trismegistus his circle” and “need not to pitch beyond ubiquity” when I cite Pandemonium as an instance of unity of smell in a large population. We read in Byron’s “Vision of Judgment” that at the sound of Pye’s heroics the whole assembly sprang off with a melodious twang and a variety of scents, some sulphureous, some ambrosial; and that the sulphureous individuals all fled one way gibbering to their own dominions, that odorous principality of the damned whither in old times the handsome minstrel went in quest of his wife. That the infernal fraternity is uni-odorous we know, on the authority of the immortal Manchegan Squire, who says: “This devil is as plump as a partridge, and has another property very different from what you devils are wont to have, for it is said they all smell of brimstone,” that is, like the Vienna matches — ohne phosphor-geruch — that Wendell Holmes hates so honestly.

To return to India, it is very certain that a single Hindoo is not always perceptibly fragrant; yet it is equally certain tha.t if, when a dozen are together, an average be struck, each individual of the party must be credited with a considerable amount. In any gathering of Orientals the Western stranger is instantly aware of a circumambient aroma; he becomes conscious of a new and powerful perfume, — a curious je ne sais quoi scent which may possibly, like attar of roses, require only endless dilution and an acquired taste to become pleasant, but which certainly requires dilution for the novice. No particular person or member of the public seems to be odorous beyond his fellows, but put three together, and they might be 300. Perhaps this is produced by