ANTONIO**, the natural son of Gonzalo Perez, for a long time secretary of state to Charles V. and Philip II., was born in 1541 at Monreal de Ariza in Aragon, and legitimated by imperial diploma in 1542. In his boyhood he accompanied his father, who attended the court through Europe, and received the elements of education at Louvain and Venice, which he finished in Madrid. Trained by his father to succeed him, he became, at the death of the latter, the principal of the two secretaries of state, and had the charge of the despacho universal. The royal council was divided into two hostile parties, headed respectively by Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli, and by the Duke of Alva; Perez adhered to the former, which had been all-powerful since the failure of Alva in the Netherlands, and continued so after the death of Ruy Gomez in 1573, till his own disgrace in 1579. Adroit, devoted, and unscrupulous—an able writer, and assiduous in business—he had by degrees assumed the highest place in the king's confidence, and was the depositary of the dangerous secrets of that suspicious tyrant. In this unenviable eminence he behaved himself imprudently, creating enemies among the nobles by ostentatious contempt, as well as by the wealth which he extorted from petitioners, and acquired (as Spanish ministers have generally done) by the sale of offices and titles. His own account of the disgrace which determined the whole of his subsequent history is, that, being authorized by the king to ensnare Escovedo, then supposed to be engaged in a plot for securing the Spanish crown for his master, Don Juan, the king's brother, Perez, after several unsuccessful attempts at poisoning Escovedo, caused him to be stabbed in the street on the 31st of March 1578. Perez's real motive, however, for the murder, was to get rid of a dangerous enemy; for Escovedo was acquainted with an intrigue of Perez with the Princess Eboli, the king's mistress, and the murderer feared his conduct might reach the ears of Philip. That this was the real motive of Perez was long questioned by historians. So high an authority as Ranke discredited it; but it has been placed beyond doubt by the researches of Mignet, which appeared first in the *Journal des Savants*, and were afterwards published separately, and appeared in an English translation in 1846. Rumour at once fastening on the real motive and culprit, the relatives of Escovedo demanded justice; and having discovered the truth, Philip had the Princess Eboli and Perez simultaneously arrested. Perez was sentenced in 1585 to ten years' banishment (including two years' close imprisonment), and heavy restitution and fine. He was shut up in the fortress of Turregamo, where he had the society of his wife, Juana Coello, whose whole life gave proof of a remarkable fidelity and self-devotion. To compel him to give up the documents that implicated Philip, he was put to the torture (February 1590), a stretch of power which had no other effect than to procure for him the sympathy of the nobles, whose privileges were violated in his person. On the 20th of July of the same year, assisted by his faithful friend Gil de Mesa, he escaped to Saragossa in Aragon, and placed himself under the protection of the fueros or independent jurisdiction of that kingdom. The events that ensue belong to Spanish history; for it was the protection Perez received from the fueros, and the spirited resistance to the arbitrary invasion of them in his case, that gave Philip, who had been long secretly undermining them, the pretext for their abolition by force of arms.

Acquitted by the court of Saragossa, the attempt was made by the monarch's instruments to transfer Perez forcibly to the prison of the Inquisition, a charge of heresy being got up against him out of the passionate blasphemies he was too apt to utter when enraged by his misfortunes. A popular insurrection set him at liberty, in which the Marquis of Almenara, viceroy in Aragon, lost his life.

In the reaction produced by this unlucky catastrophe, the attempt was repeated under more legal forms; but a second insurrection, contrived by the friends of Perez, frustrated it, and he was able to escape to France. He Perfumery was received with kindness at Pau by the Princess Catherine, who brought him to her brother Henri IV., at Tours, in the spring of 1593. Henri sent him on a secret mission to the coast of England, where he warmly and ably seconded the active counsels of the Earl of Essex, which well accorded with his own animosity against his former master. Through Essex he became intimate with Francis and Antony Baca, and received a pension of L130. While in England he published his Relaciones in 1594, under the name of Raphael Pelegrino. In January 1595 he was recalled by Henri IV., who had declared war against Philip II. He received as residence a house that had belonged to the Duc de Merceur and a guard to protect him against assassination. His position, however, was precarious and irksome. An unsuccessful mission to England in 1595 aggravated his discontent, and the part he played in the treaty with Spain in 1597 had not the effect of strengthening his interest with the French king. The succession of Philip III. in 1598 raised his hopes again; but it was not till April of the following year that his wife and children were liberated. All the efforts he made to get himself recalled were, however, vain; a mission which he undertook to England in the interest of Spain in 1604, and on the strength of which he resigned his pension, ignominiously failed: he was obliged to leave England as soon as he had arrived, and returned to France to spend his last days in want, solitude, and despair. He died 3rd November 1611, and was buried in the Célestins.

Perez has an eminent place in Spanish literature. Besides the Relaciones above mentioned, the Memorial and Comentarios relating to that work, which is not very trustworthy, he published Cartas Familiares. Many of these letters are in Latin; those, namely, to Essex and his other English and French friends. They have the same essential qualities as those in his own language to his family and friends in Spain. His faults are those of his age; and some of them were adopted from the fashionable euphemism of England. He has conceits, false and strained analogies, in abundance; the whole vocabulary of mythology, and the fabulous natural history in vogue, are at his command; of Tacitus he imitated the compression and the obscurity; he affected the sententious smartness of Seneca; these were his favourite authors. On the other hand, he has passages of a noble and touching pathos, happy similitudes well hit off, and much of the bitter wisdom of disappointment. He had seen the great very closely, had been the secretary and agent of a dark and tortuous tyrant, knew well and cleverly delineates the Machiavelism of the age. Many of his sharp sentences have become proverbial; many deserve to become so. A Life of Philip II. by him is in existence, but has not been published.

PERFUMERY is the art of preparing certain substances for the gratification of the sense of smell. But according to a modern professor of the art (Madame Celnart, Manuel du Parfumeur, Paris, 1845), perfumery has a much more extensive range, including the preparation of volatile oils, pomades, absorbent powders for increasing, and depilatories for diminishing the growth of hair; creams and cosmetics for the skin; almond and other pastes; dentifrices, and mouth-washes; essences and scented waters; dry perfumes, such as pastilles, cassolettes, and printanières, or little perforated ivory boxes containing a dry scented paste, to be worn in the pocket; sachet powders for insertion in silken bags or ornamental envelopes; aromatic vinegars, and toilet soaps, hair powders, and bandolines, hard and liquid, for dressing the hair. All these names indicate as many different classes of perfumes, and each class sometimes contains an almost endless variety, as in the various scents for the handkerchief, oils for the hair, &c.

The use of perfumes has been common among most nations from the earliest times. The monuments of ancient Egypt represent the censor exhaling its grateful perfume before the presiding deity; and the surfaces of tombs often represent the preparation of spices and perfumes for the embalming of the dead. The unrolling of the mummy in our museums has placed in our hands the costly perfumes actually used by the ancient Egyptians. Frequent reference is made in Holy Scripture to perfumes. In Exod. xxx., Moses is directed to take pure myrrh, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and oil of olive, which he is to compound, "after the art of the apothecary," for a holy anointing oil. He is also directed to take sweet spices, stacte, onycha, galbanum, and pure frankincense, to make a perfume to be placed "before the testimony in the tabernacle of the congregation." Several perfumes are also mentioned in the Canticles.—iv. 14; Ps. xlv. 8; Prov. vii. 17; Jer. vi. 20; and other passages, of which the most familiar in the New Testament is in Mark xiv. 3, where a woman "having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious, brake the box, and poured it on his head." The ancient Greeks and Romans made free use of perfumes, which they carried in costly and elegant boxes to the bath, after the use of which they anointed and scented themselves. Perfumes are still largely used in the East, where it is the custom to sprinkle guests with rose-water, and to perfume them with aloes-wood at the close of a visit, as a mark of hospitality and friendship. The use of perfumes in Great Britain, at least among the male sex, has greatly declined since the free use of soap has become general. The man who is most fastidious about his dress now hesitates to employ perfumes freely, lest he should become obnoxious to the sarcasm of the poet Cowper:

"The sight's enough; no need to smell a bean."

Still, however, the trade in perfumes is enormous, a considerable portion of the industry of the south of France being employed in their preparation. Cannes is celebrated for perfumes produced from the rose, tuberose, cassia, jasmine, and orange neroli. At Nîmes, thyme, rosemary, aspic, and lavender are manufactured. Nice is famous for the products of the violet and reeda; Sicily for those of the lemon, the bergamot, and the orange; England excels in the preparation of lavender and peppermint; Mitcham in Surrey, and Hitchin in Hertfordshire, being celebrated for their essential oils.

Perfumes are chiefly of vegetable origin, although there are a few of animal, such as musk and civet, and of chemical, such as the salts of ammonia. Various parts of a plant may contribute odour: in some cases it is the root, as in the iris; in others, the stem or wood, as in cedar; or it may be the leaves, as in mint; or the flower, as in the rose and the violet; or the seed, as in the Tonquin bean; or the bark, as in cinnamon. Some plants give more than one odour: thus the orange tree yields three,—namely, petit grain, from the leaves; neroli, from the flowers; and the essential oil of orange, called Portugal, from the rind of the fruit.

Vegetable odours are due to volatile oils contained in certain small vessels or sacs, or generated from time to time during the life of the plant, as when it is in blossom. Some odours exude by incision, as in the case of certain odoriferous gums, such as benzoin; or balsams, which are mixtures of an odorous oil and an insipidous gum. Some balsams are prepared, in the country which produces the plants, by boiling the plant in water, straining, and evaporating to the consistence of treacle; as in the case of balsam of Peru, which is prepared from the Myroxylon peruiferum. Such balsams are used for mixing with soap, and in some cases medicinally.

Perfumes are for the most part prepared by one of four operations, namely,—(1.) Expression; (2.) Distillation; (3.) Maceration; (4.) Absorption or enfleurage. By the first operation essential oils may be obtained, such as the oil of orange, of lemon, or of citron peel. The peel is packed Perfumery in a cloth bag, and subjected to pressure in a powerful iron press. The oil which exudes is contaminated with the watery extract, but the different fluids separate on being left to repose in appropriate vessels, and the oil can be removed by means of a pipette. In the second process, the herbs are put into a still, together with a quantity of water, which being raised to the boiling point, the volatile otto comes over with the steam. Spirit is sometimes used in the still, but it is better to draw the oil first with water, and then to dissolve the oil in spirit. The products of the distillation are put into a funnel, and they separate by standing. The stills are heated by means of steam, by which the risk of burning and imparting an empyreumatic flavour to the products is avoided. Some idea of the extensive nature of the operation of distilling may be formed from the fact, that at Mitcham a ton of herbs is distilled at one operation.

With the exception of the essential oils of lavender and peppermint, the south of France is the great seat of the manufacture of essential oils,—such as those of the rose, neroli, lemon-thyme, and rosemary. In preparing the essence of roses, the water and the roses are put into the still until one-half of the water has been distilled off; and when a considerable quantity of water of the first distillation has been obtained, it is used as water upon fresh rose-leaves; and this plan is repeated five times. In distilling orange-flowers to obtain the essence of neroli, the same process is adopted; but orange-flower water is obtained at the first distillation.

By means of maceration, or, as the perfumer sometimes calls it, infusion, a variety of pommades, scented oils, and scented spirits are prepared. The vessel containing the liquid, such as the fat, oil, or spirit, together with the essential oil, or the parts of the plant which afford the scent, is heated by means of a water-bath or bain-marie. The fat for pommades should be first pounded in a marble mortar until the membranes are completely torn; it should then be heated in a water-bath, skimmed, and filtered through canvas. Mr Piessie, in his work on Perfumery (2d edit. 1856), speaks of the oil of behin, from Jamaica, as being a perfectly inodorous fat oil, well adapted for extracting the odours of flowers by maceration. In preparing rose, orange-flower, and cassia pommades, a quantity of lard and beef suet are melted in a pan called a bigadere; the rose-leaves are stirred in, and left for twenty-four hours, when the mass is again melted, strained, and fresh flowers are added; and so on for ten or fifteen times. In some cases the pommade is made into rectangular bricks, and pressed to separate the solid matter from the soft pommade; the bricks are then put into a perforated barrel, and pressed until the pommade exudes and flows into a copper vessel placed under the trough of the press. In preparing scented spirits, the essential oil and spirits of wine are digested in a water-bath, and frequently agitated during three days, when the spirit is drawn off into a second digester, and after three days to a third digester, with similar treatment. The celebrated eau de Cologne is prepared by distillation and infusion, the latter process being preferred. The successful preparation of this perfume is regarded as the perfection of the art. The various essential oils of which it is composed ought to be combined so harmoniously that no one of them shall be perceptible, not only at the first impression, but during the evaporation of the scent; a remark which should apply to other perfumes. When the ingredients differ but little among each other in odour and volatility, the desired result may be more easily attained. The constituents of eau de Cologne are said to be the essential oils of the lemon, the citron, and the orange, prepared from the fruit in different stages of maturity, and they approach so closely to each other as to produce only a single aromatic impression. Minute proportions of other oils are added, such as otto of roses, oil of cloves, or oil of cinnamon; but the eau de

Cologne is regarded as of inferior quality if a residuary odour Pergamus of either of these substances remains after volatilization. Perfumes for the handkerchief are known to the perfumer as simple or compound,—the former being called extracts, esprits, or essences; and the latter, bouquets or noregues.

By the process of absorption or enfleurage pommades and scented oils are extensively prepared, for which purpose a square four-sided frame or chassis, two or three inches deep, with a pane of glass resting on its inside ledges, is used. On this pane of glass a simple pommade of hog's lard and suet is spread, and into this sweet-scented flowers are stuck every day for two or three months, until the pommade is sufficiently rich in perfume. Several thousand frames are operated on in this way, and they are arranged in piles over each other. Pommades of jasmine, tuberose, violet, &c., are prepared in this way. The oils of the same flowers are similarly prepared. Cotton cloth, stretched in an iron frame, is imbued with the best olive-oil, and completely covered with a thin layer of flowers. Upon this is placed another frame treated in the same manner, and a pile is made in this way; and when the oil is saturated with the odour of the flowers the pile is carefully pressed, and the scented oil flows out. Rose, orange-flower, and cassia oils, however, are made by infusion.

For the proportions in which the various ingredients are used, particulars of manipulation, apparatus, &c., we must refer to books appropriated to the subject, such as that of Mr Piessie; but we cannot close this short article without remarking how so apparently trivial a subject as perfumes rises in dignity as soon as it touches on chemical science. So long as the perfumer confined himself to empirical processes and shallow secrets, science did not disturb his operations; but when it was asserted, at the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851, that certain essences in extensive use had for some time previously been prepared by artificial means, the chemist took a lively interest in the perfumer. It appeared that a scent called winter-green oil, obtained from an ericaceous plant, the Gaultheria procumbens, had been imported in considerable quantities from New Jersey in America. Now, it was found that this oil was a true compound ether, consisting of salicylic acid and pyroxylic spirit, and capable of being formed by a combination of these substances, so as to possess all the characters of the natural product. This observation led to the discovery, that among the numerous ethers prepared by the chemist, some, on being properly diluted, presented the odour of certain fruits so decidedly that it appeared all but certain that the fruits themselves were indebted to these ethers for their odours. (See Chemistry, vol. vi.; also Oils, Essential.)