The Anatomy of Melancholy

The gleam of bronze, and echoing halls bright with flashing Gold, shining electrum, carved ivory, And silver too. Such is Jove’s lofty dwelling: The gods’ starry palace shines on Olympus.

Such glittering gold and shining brass, Clear amber, pure silver, and fine ivory: Jupiter’s lofty palace, where the gods dwell, Was just like this, and did not surpass it.

It will “relax the mind,” refresh the human soul, to see finely built cities, streets, theatres, temples, obelisks, and the like. The Temple in Jerusalem was so beautifully built of white marble, with so many gold-covered pyramids—“and the temple’s roof, flashing with yellow gold, blinded travellers’ eyes with its overpowering brilliance”—that it was glorious and glittered so brightly from afar that spectators could scarcely bear to look at it. Its interior was all so elaborately adorned with cedar, gold, jewels, and so forth, as the poet said of Cleopatra’s palace in Egypt:

… And thick gold had hidden the beams.

So that the beholders were astonished. What is so pleasant as seeing a pageant or procession go by, as at coronations, weddings, and similar ceremonies, or seeing an ambassador or prince welcomed, received, and entertained with masques, shows, fireworks, and so forth?

To see two kings fight in single combat, like Porus and Alexander, Cnut and Edmund Ironside, or Skanderbeg and Ferat Pasha the Turk, when not honour alone but life itself is at stake, as the poet says of Hector:

… For the contest was not for a bull’s hide, Nor for an ox, the customary prizes of a race, But for great Hector’s very life and soul.

To watch a battle fought like Crécy, Agincourt, or Poitiers, “than which I do not know,” says Froissart, “whether antiquity can produce any more famous.” To see one of Caesar’s triumphs in ancient Rome revived, or something similar.

To attend a meeting of sovereigns, like the famous meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I, celebrated throughout Europe, “where the two kings and their wives met with such magnificent preparations,” says Hubertus Vellius, “and such triumphant splendour that no age had ever seen or heard of such celebrated festivities”: no age ever saw the like.

Such shows are so immensely enjoyable that people will often come hundreds of miles to see them, pay any price for a place, and remember them many years later with exceptional delight. Bodin, when he was an ambassador in England, said that he saw the noblemen going in their robes to Parliament: “we saw it with the greatest pleasure.” The sight moved him deeply.

Pompeo Colonna, says Giovio in his life of him, once saw thirteen Frenchmen and as many Italians fight on behalf of a whole army: “he calls it the most delightful spectacle of his life,” the pleasantest sight he had ever seen. Who would not have been moved by such a spectacle?