e walk, how
we place our windows, lights, and houses, how we let in or exclude this
ambient air. The Egyptians, to avoid immoderate heat, make their windows on
the top of the house like chimneys, with two tunnels to draw a thorough
air. In Spain they commonly make great opposite windows without glass,
still shutting those which are next to the sun: so likewise in Turkey and
Italy (Venice excepted, which brags of her stately glazed palaces) they use
paper windows to like purpose; and lie, _sub dio_, in the top of their
flat-roofed houses, so sleeping under the canopy of heaven. In some parts
of [3186]Italy they have windmills, to draw a cooling air out of hollow
caves, and disperse the same through all the chambers of their palaces, to
refresh them; as at Costoza, the house of Caesareo Trento, a gentleman of
Vicenza, and elsewhere. Many excellent means are invented to correct nature
by art. If none of these courses help, the best way is to make artificial
air, which howsoever is profitable and good, still to be made hot and
moist, and to be seasoned with sweet perfumes, [3187]pleasant and lightsome
as it may be; to have roses, violets, and sweet-smelling flowers ever in
their windows, posies in their hand. Laurentius commends water-lilies, a
vessel of warm water to evaporate in the room, which will make a more
delightful perfume, if there be added orange-flowers, pills of citrons,
rosemary, cloves, bays, rosewater, rose-vinegar, benzoin, laudanum, styrax,
and such like gums, which make a pleasant and acceptable perfume.
[3188]Bessardus Bisantinus prefers the smoke of juniper to melancholy
persons, which is in great request with us at Oxford, to sweeten our
chambers. [3189]Guianerius prescribes the air to be moistened with water,
and sweet herbs boiled in it, vine, and sallow leaves, &c., [3190] to
besprinkle the ground and posts with rosewater, rose-vinegar, which
Avicenna much approves. Of colours it is good to behold green, red, yellow,
and white, and by all means to have light enough, with windows in the day,
wax candles in the night, neat chambers, good fires in winter, merry
companions; for though melancholy persons love to be dark and alone, yet
darkness is a great increaser of the humour.

Although our ordinary air be good by nature or art, yet it is not amiss, as
I have said, still to alter it; no better physic for a melancholy man than
change of air, and variety of places, to travel abroad and see fashions.
[3191