TABLE TRAITS,

WITH

SOMETHING ON THEM.

BY

DR. DORAN.

“Je suis aujourd’hui en train de conter; plaise à Dieu que cela ne soit pas une calamité publique.”—Brillat Savarin.

LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET;

OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH; HODGES & SMITH, DUBLIN;

AND TO BE HAD OF ALL BOOKSELLERS, AND AT THE RAILWAY STATIONS.

1854.

LONDON:
R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.

TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
HENRY, EARL OF HAREWOOD,
IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF BY-GONE
HAPPY YEARS,
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED
BY

THE AUTHOR.

BILL OF FARE.

TABLE TRAITS,

WITH SOMETHING ON THEM.

THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON.
A PROLOGUE.

“Le véritable Amphitryon est l’Amphitryon où l’on dîne.”—Molière.

Among well-worn illustrations and similes, there are few that have been more hardly worked than the above line of Poquelin-Molière. It is a line which tells us pleasantly enough, that he who sits at the head of a table is among those “respectable” powers who find an alacrity of worship at the hands of man. I say, “at the hands;” for what is “adoration” but the act of putting the hand to the mouth (as expressed by its components ad and os, oris)? and what worship is so common as that which takes this form, especially when the Amphitryon is amiable, and his altar well supplied?

But such a solution of the question affords us, after all, no enlightenment as to the mystery of the reality of Amphitryon himself, whose name is now worn, and sometimes usurped, by those who preside at modern banquets. Was he real? is he a myth? was he ever in the body? or is his name that of a shadow only, employed for purposes of significance? If real, whence came he? What does classic story say of the abused husband of Alcmena?

Amphitryon was a Theban gentleman, who had two nephews, fast young men, who were slain by the Teleboans. This is a myth. They were extravagant individuals, of the class of those who count the chimes at midnight. Their father could not help them; and so the uncle, a bachelor, was expected to do his avuncular office, spend his substance for the benefit of his brother’s children, and get small thanks for his trouble. His brother, however, had an article of small value,—a daughter, named Alcmena; and this lady was given in marriage to her uncle, without any scruple about the laws of affinity. As soon as the ceremony of the betrothal was over, Amphitryon departed to punish the Teleboans; and he had not been long absent, when Jupiter presented himself in the likeness of the absent husband, set up a household with the readily-convinced Alcmena, and became the father of Hercules. When Amphitryon returned, his surprise was natural, and his ill-temper not to be wondered at. But Jupiter explained the imbroglio in a very cavalier way, as was his custom, and which they who are curious may see in the liveliest of the lively comedies of the miller’s man, Plautus.

An incident connected with the story shows us that Amphitryon, fond of good living generally, and of beef in particular, made a razzia among the Teleboan herds, and brought back all the cows and oxen he found amongst them. He was exhibiting the cattle to his brother Electryon, when one of the animals strayed from the herd; and Amphitryon, in order to bring it back, flung a stick at it, but with such violence, that the weapon, falling on the horns, rebounded as violently upon Electryon, who died upon the spot. But this, too, is a myth; and I have no doubt but that Electryon died of indigestion; for the Teleboan beef was famous for its toughness. Indeed, many of the Teleboës themselves were so disgusted with it, that they abandoned their Ætolian homes, and settled in the island of Capreæ.

The Egyptians claim Amphitryon for their own. They boast that his dinners at Memphis were divine, and that Hercules, his son, was among the last-born of the gods; for Hercules was more than a hero among the leek-worshippers of Egypt. But the truth is, that the story of Amphitryon, his strength, his good fare, and his hard fate, belongs to a more distant period and land. It is a Hindoo story, the actors are children of the sun, and Voltaire declares that the tale is to be found in Dow’s “Hindostan;” but that is as much of a fable as the legend itself of Amphitryon, whose name, by the way, may be as easily “Indicized” as that of Pythagoras.

In Scotland, the crime of child-stealing is distinguished by the title of “plagiary;” and an instance of the latter is here before us. When Plautus sat in his master’s mill, and thought over the subject of his lively comedy, founded on the story of Amphitryon, he took for granted all that he had been told of his hero’s birth and parentage. But the classical Amphitryon is, as I have said, but a stolen child. His home is in the far East; and his history was calling up smiles upon the faces of listeners by the Indus long before the twin founders of Rome had been intrusted, by their nurse Lupa, to walk alone. The Hindoo Amphitryon was a fellow of some renown, and here is his story.

A Hindoo, whose name, indeed, has not descended to us,—but he was the individual whom the Greeks stole, and called Amphitryon,—lived many years ago. He was remarkable for his gigantic strength and stature; and he not only found the former a good thing to possess, but he used it like a giant. He had for the wife of his bosom a fair, but fragile, girl, who lay in his embrace, as she sang to him at sunset, “like Hebe in Hercules’ arms.” It was not often, however, that such passages of peace embellished the course of their daily life. The Hindoo was jealous, and his little wife was coquettish. The lady had smiles for flatterers; and her monster of a husband had a stick, which showered blows upon her when he detected her neglecting her household work. Cudgelling took its turn with caressing, as it did in the more modern, and consequently more vulgar, case of Captain Wattle and Miss Roe; and finally there was much more of the first than there was of the last. One summer eve, the husband, in a fit of frantic jealousy, assaulted his wife so ferociously, that he left her insensible on the threshold of their house, and threatened never again to keep up a ménage with so incorrigible a partner.

A Hindoo deity, of an inferior order,—not the King of gods and men, as in the Grecian legend,—had witnessed the whole proceeding from his abiding place in a neighbouring cloud. He smiled as the husband disappeared; and, gradually descending in his little palace to the ground, he lightly leaped on to the firm set earth, gave a hurried glance at the unconscious and thickly-bruised beauty, and then, in testimony of his ecstatic delight, he clapped his hands, and commenced revolving on one leg, as D’Egville used to do, when Venua’s violin led the orchestra, and gave him strength.

The spirit, having subsided into repose, thought for a while, and speedily arrived at a resolution. It infused itself into a human body, which was found without difficulty, and it clothed the whole under the counterfeit presentment of the errant husband. These feats of transmutation were common among the eastern deities; and I take for granted that my readers are aware that Pythagoras himself—who is connected with Table Traits, on the subject of beans—was no other than Buddha Goroos, who slipped into a vacant body, and taught the metempsychosis to wondering Europe.

The wife of the Hindoo giant was something astonished, on recovering herself, to find that she was seated, without any sense of pain, on a bench in the little garden, with her apparent husband at her feet, pouring out protestations of love and assurances of fidelity. She accepted all, without questioning; for it was all too pleasant to be refused. A new life commenced. The married pair became the admiring theme of the village; and when a son was born to them, there ensued such showers of felicitations and flowers as had never fallen upon married lovers since the Hindoo world first started on its career, on the back of the self-supporting elephant. Their moon never ceased to shed honey; and this was flowing, sweetly and copiously as ever, when, one sultry noon, the vagrant husband returned home, and, confronting the counterfeit at an inner door, bitterly satirized the vanity of women who indulged in capricious tempers and Psyche glasses. In an instant, however, he was conscious that his other self was not a reflection, but only the cause of many that began crowding into the brain of the true man. The cool complacency of the counterfeit irritated the bewildered and legitimate husband, and an affray ensued, in which the mortal got all the blows, and his rival all the advantage. The wife was herself perplexed, but manifested a leaning towards the irresistible divinity. In vain did the gigantic original roar forth the tale of his wrongs, and claim his undoubted rights; and it was only during a lull in the storm that he heeded a suggestion made, to the effect, that all the parties should submit their case to the judgment of an inspired Brahmin.

This eminent individual speedily perceived that, of the double-man that stood before him, one was a dupe, and the other a deity,—something, at all events, above humanity. The question was, how to discover the divinity. After much cogitation, this was the judgment pronounced by the dusky Solomon: “Madam,” said he to the perplexed lady, “your husband was known as being the most robust man ever made out of the red earth, of which was composed the father of us all. Now, let these two litigants salute you on the lips; and we pronounce him to be the true man who comes off with the loudest report.” The trial took place forthwith in presence of the assembled multitude. The Indian mortal first approached the up-raised lips of his wife; and he performed the required feat with an echo that was as half a hundred culverins to the “pistol-shot” kiss recorded of Petruchio. The Judge and the people looked curiously to the defendant, as wondering how, on the pretty instrument before him, he could strike a note higher than his rival. The Indian god addressed him to what seemed a rose-bud wet with dew; and therewith ensued a sound as though all the artillery of the skies were saluting, too, in honour of the achievement. The multitude and the Brahmin looked, for all the world, as if they had lost their hearing; and it was calculated that the astounding din might have been heard by the slumbering tortoise below the antipodes. At length, the assembly hailed the deity as the undoubted Simon Pure, and looked towards the Brahmin for confirmation of their award; but the Brahmin merely remarked to them, with urbanity, that they were the sons and fathers of asses, and were unable to distinguish between the almost invisible seed which diets the bird of Paradise, and the gigantic palm of the garden of the gods, each leaf of which is of such extent that an earthly courser, at his utmost speed, could not traverse it in fifty millions of mortal-measured years. “Here is the true husband,” added the Judge, putting his hand upon the shoulder of the Indian, “who has done all that human being, in the particular vocation required, could do; and here,” added he, turning reverentially to the other, “is some supreme being, who has been pleased to amuse himself at the expense of his servants.”

The god smiled, and confessed to the excellence of the Judge’s perspicuity by revealing himself in his true, and somewhat operatic, form. He ascended the cloud, which appeared in waiting for him like an aërial cab, and, looking from over its side, laughingly bade the edified multitude farewell, adding, that he was the deity appointed to preside at tables that were not ungraced by the fair;—and, “if these have a cause for complaint, it is my privilege to avenge them according to my good pleasure.” The ladies thereupon flung flowers to him as he rose, and the husbands saluted his departure with rather faint cheers; but throughout India, while orthodoxy lasted, there never was a table spread, but the master thereat, prince or peasant, invoked the Hindoo deity to cast the beams of the sun of his gaiety upon the board. Heresy, however, in this matter, has crept in; and, if Hindoo feasts lack real brilliancy, it is because the sunlight of the god no longer beams from the eyes of the fair, who are no longer present sharers in the banquet. It is otherwise in Europe, whither, perhaps, the god came, and aped Jupiter, as well as Amphitryon, when he perplexed the household of Alcmena. He sits presiding at our feast, ensconced within a rose; from thence his smiles urge to enjoyment, and the finger on his lip to discretion; and every docile guest whispers sub rosâ, and acknowledges the present god.

It is said, in India, that this divinity was the one who gave men diet, but forgot digestion. It was like giving them philosophical lectures, without power to understand them; and the case is still common enough upon earth. These subjects demand brief notice, were it only by way of appendix to this prolegomenical chapter.

DIET AND DIGESTION.

“No digest of law’s like the law of digestion.”—Moore.

Our good neighbours the French, or rather, the philosophers among them, have asserted that the perfecting of man and his species depends upon attention to diet and digestion; and, in a material point of view, they are not far wrong; and, indeed, in a non-material point of view, it may be said that the spirit, without judgment, is very likely to be exposed to indigestion; and perhaps ignorance complete is to be preferred to an ill-digested erudition. With diet and patience, Walpole thought all the diseases of man might be easily cured. Montesquieu, on the other hand, held that health purchased by rigorously watching over diet, was but a tedious disease. But Walpole was nearly correct, while Montesquieu was not very distant from the truth. Dieting, like other things, must be undertaken on common-sense principles; for, though there be multitudes of mad people in the world, society generally is not to be put upon the régime of “Bedlam.”

We live, not by what we eat, but by what we digest; and what one man may digest, another would die of attempting. Rules on this subject are almost useless. Each man may soon learn the powers of his stomach, in health or disease, in this respect; and this ascertained, he has no more business to bring on indigestion than he has to get intoxicated or fall into debt. He who offends on these three points, deserves to forfeit stomach, head, and his electoral franchise!

Generally speaking, fat and spices resist the digestive power; and too much nutritious food is the next evil to too little. Good cookery, by developing flavour, increases the nutritiousness of food, which bad cookery would perhaps render indigestible. Hence a good cook rises to the dignity of “artist.” He may rank with the chemists, if not with the physicians.

Animal food, of mild quality, is more digestible than vegetable, and fresh meats are preferable to salted. In the latter the salt is a different composition from that which is taken at meals, and which is indispensable to health. Fish fills rather than feeds; but there are exceptions to this. Vegetables are accounted as doing little to maintain stamina; but there have been races and classes of men who have been heroes upon bread, fruit, and vegetables. The poor cannot live upon “curry,” it is true; but in England, with less drink and more vegetable food, they would be an improved race. Not that they could live like a Lazzaroni on maccaroni and the open air. Layard says the Bedouin owes his health and strength to his spare diet. But even a Bedouin swallows lumps of butter till he becomes bilious; and were he to live in England instead of the desert, he would not keep up his strength by living on the dishes which support him in Arabia Felix. The golden rule is “moderation and regularity.” He who transgresses the rule, will pay for it by present suffering and a “check” after Christmas.

A false hunger ought not to be soothed, nor a false thirst to be satisfied; for satisfaction here is only adding fuel to a fire that would otherwise go out. On the other hand, the bilious and sedentary man need not be afraid of beer; it is a better stomachic than wine. For him, and for all lords of that heritage of woe, a weak stomach, the common-sense system of cookery, as it is called, is most required. It is something between the hard crude system of the English, and the juice-extracting method of the French; with a leaning, however, towards the latter, (with whom it is common to reduce food to a condition of pulp,) but uniting with it so much of the English custom as allows the gelatinous matter to be retained, especially in the meats. “Festina lente,” is “Latin de cuisine,” for “Eat slowly,” and it is of first-rate value. He who does so, gives best chance for healthy chyle; and that wanting, I should like to know where the post-prandial enjoyment would be. Without it, digestion is not; and when digestion is away, Death is always peering about to profit by his absence. “See to it!” as the Chinese “chop” says.

There are upwards of seventeen hundred works extant on the subject of diet and digestion. Sufferers may study the question till they are driven mad by doubt and dyspepsia, and difference of opinions among the doctors. Fordyce saw no use in the saliva, and Paris maintains that without it digestion is not. “Quot homines, tot sententiæ,” is as applicable here as in every other vexed question. But Paris’s book on Diet is the safest guide I know for a man who, being dyspeptic, wants to cure himself, or simply to discover the definement of his degree of suffering. On the other hand, every man may find comfort in the reflection, that with early hours, abundant exercise, generous diet, but not too much of it, and occupation,—without which a worse devil than the former enters on possession of the victim,—dyspepsia cannot assume a chronic form. It may be a casual visitor, but it will be the easiest thing possible to get rid of him. But philosophy has said as much from the beginning, and yet dyspepsia prevails and physicians ride in carriages. Exactly! and why? Because philosophers themselves, like the Stoic gentleman in Marmontel, after praising simplicity of living, sink to sleep, on heavy suppers and beds of down, with the suicidal remark, that “Le Luxe est une jolie chose.”

We must neither act unreservedly on the dictum of books, nor copy slavishly the examples of others, if we would have the digestion in a healthy condition. There is a self-monitor that may safely be consulted. Of his existence there can be no doubt; for every man who wakes with a headache most ungratefully blames that same monitory “self.”

If any class may fairly complain of others in this respect, rather than of themselves, it is the “babies.” The Rajpoots do not slay half so many of their infants out of pride, as we do by indiscreet dieting; or, to speak plainly, over-feeding. The New Zealand mother is not more foolish, who thrusts stones down the throat of her babe, in order to make him a stern and fearless warrior, and only mars him for a healthy man. And Christian matrons have been quite as savage without intending it. Brantome’s uncle, Chastargnerage, was no sooner weaned than, by the advice of a Neapolitan physician, he took gold, steel, and iron, (in powders,) mixed up with all he ate and drank. This regimen he followed until he was twelve years old, by which time (we are asked to believe) it had so strengthened him that he could stop a wild bull in full course. This diet, however, seems little likely to have produced such an effect. As soon might one expect that the Bolton ass, which chewed tobacco and took snuff, was made swift as a race-horse by so doing. I think that it is of Dean Nowell it is said, that he grew strong by drinking ale. He was the accidental inventor of bottled ale. He was out fishing with a bottle of the freshly-drawn beverage at his side, when intelligence reached him touching the peril his life was in, under Mary, which made him fly, after flinging away his rod, and thrusting his bottle of ale under the grass. When he could again safely resort to the same spot, he looked for his bottle, which, on being disturbed, drove out the cork like a pellet from a gun, and contained so creamy a fluid, that the Dean, noting the fact, and rejoicing therein, took care to be well provided with the same thenceforward. As Henry II. was the first King who acted as sewer, and placed the boar’s head on the table of his young son, just crowned, so Dean Nowell was the first church dignitary who laid the foundation of red noses, by bringing bottled ale to the notice of the clergy. There is an old tradition, that what this ale used to do for churchmen, cider used to effect for Africans.

As we have said, “moderation” is the first principle of digestion; and as, according to the Latin proverb, “water gives moderation,” it behoves us to look for a few minutes into the much praised, and little appreciated, aqua pura.

WATER.

A Kentucky man, who was lately at one of the great tables in an hotel in the States, where the bill of fare was in French, after sorely puzzling himself with descriptions which he could not comprehend, “cotelettes à la Maintenon” and “œufs à la braise;” exclaimed, “I shall go back to first principles: give me some roast beef!” So, after speaking of the birth of him, whose putative father has lent a name to liberal hosts, let us also fall back upon first principles, and contemplate the uses of water.

There is nothing in nature more useful; but, commonly speaking, you can neither buy any thing with it, nor get any article for it in exchange. Adam Smith strikingly compares with it the uselessness and the value of a diamond: the latter has scarcely any value in use, but much that is valuable may be had in exchange for it. In the desert a cup full of water is worth one full of diamonds; that is, in certain emergencies. The diamond and the water illustrate the difference between value in use and value in exchange.

If water be not, according to Pindar and the legend over the Bath Pump-Room, the best of things, few things would attain to excellence without it. Greek philosophy was not wrong which made it the principle of life, and the popular belief scarcely erred in seeing in every stream, spring, and fountain a resident deity. Water was so reverenced by certain ancient nations, that they would never desecrate it by purifying themselves therewith! The ancient Persians and Cappadocians exemplified their devotion by personal dirtiness. In presence of the visible power of the stream, altars were raised, and adoration paid to the god whose existence was evidenced by such power. The Egyptians gave their divine river more than prayers, because their dependence on it was more absolute than that of other nations on their respective streams. The Nile, swelling beneficently, bestowed food, health, and therewith content on the Egyptians; and they, in return, flung gratefully into the stream corn, sugar, and fruit. When human sacrifices were made to rivers, it was probably because the river was recognised as giving life, and was worthy of being paid in kind. We may smile superciliously at this old reverence for the “liquid good,” but there was connected therewith much that we might profitably condescend to copy. Greece had her officers appointed to keep her streams pure. Had those officials exposed the people to drink such indescribable matter as we draw from the Thames, they would have been thrown into it by popular indignation. In Rome, Ancus Martius was long remembered, not for his victories, but for his care to supply the city with salubrious and sufficient water; and if people generally cursed Nero for his crimes, they acknowledged that he had at least not damaged the public aqueducts; and that in his reign ice-houses were first built, the contents of which enabled thousands to quaff the cool beverage which is so commendably spoken of by Aristotle.

The fountains were the ornaments of the public places, as the crystal ampulla, with its slender neck and its globular body, was of the sideboards of private houses in Rome. The common people drank to excess, both of hot water and cold: the former they drank in large measures;—this was in winter, and in taverns where they fed largely upon pork, and drank the water as a stimulant! The Emperor Claudius looked upon this regimen as an immoral indulgence, and he closed the taverns where proprietors injured the public stomach by such a diet. Some Romans were so particular as to boil the water they intended to drink, in vessels at their own table. They were like the epicures who never intrust the boiling of an egg to their own cooks. We may notice that Augustus employed it lavishly, both as a bather and drinker. The “faculty” were unanimous in recommending a similar use of it, and some of these gentlemen made considerable fortunes by the various methods of applying it. For instance, patients resorting to Charmis, to take cold baths in winter under his direction, were required to pay him a consulting fee of £800! He was the first “water-cure” Doctor that ever practised, and he realized a fortune such as his successors may aim at in vain.

Horace Walpole, forgetting what he had once before said, namely, that diet and patience formed the universal panacea, declared that his “great nostrum was the use of cold water, inwardly and outwardly, on all occasions, and that with disregard of precaution against catching cold. I have often,” he continues, “had the gout in my face and eyes, and instantly dip my head in a pail of cold water, which always cures it, and does not send it any where else.” And again, alluding to another use of water, he says sneeringly, “Whether Christianity will be laid aside I cannot say. As nothing of the spirit is left, the forms, I think, signify very little. Surely, it is not an age of morality and principle; does it import whether profligacy is baptized or not?”

With regard to the sanitary application of water, as noticed by Walpole, there can be no doubt but that diet and digestion proceed the more perfectly, as the ablution of the body is general and daily, and made with cold water. But discretion must be used; for there are conditions of the body which cannot endure cold bathing without palpitation of the heart following. In such case, tepid water should be used for a time, when the palpitations will soon cease, unless the heart be organically affected.

The same writer’s remarks on the Christian uses of water, remind me of what is said of some such uses in Weever’s “Funeral Monuments.” He cites the inscriptions that used to be placed over the holy water in ancient churches. Some deposed that the sprinkling of it drove away devils:—

“Hujus aquæ tactus depellit dæmonis actus.”

Others promised a blessing, as, for example:—

“Asperget vos Deus cum omnibus sanctis suis ad vitam æternam.”

Another implied, that six benefits arose from its use; namely,—

——“Sex operantur aquâ benedictâ:

Cor mundat, accidiam (?) fugat, venalia tollit,

Auget opem; removetque hostem, phantasmata pellit.”

Homer, too, it will be recollected, speaks of the sound of water inspiring consolatory thoughts, in the passage where he describes one “suffering cruel wounds from a diseased heart, but he found a remedy; for, sitting down beneath a lofty rock, looking down upon the sea, he began to sing.”

The dormitories of many of the old convents were adorned with inscriptions recommendatory of personal cleanliness; but the inmates generally were more content with the theory than the practice: they were, in some degree, like the man at Bishop-Middleham, who died with the reputation of a water-drinker, but who really killed himself by secret drunkenness. He praised water in public, but drank brandy in private, though it was not till after death that his delinquency was discovered.

The use of water against the spells of witchcraft lingered longer in Scotland than elsewhere. The Strathdown Highlander even now, it is said, is not ashamed to drink “the water of the dead and living ford,” on New Year’s Day, as a charm to secure him from sorcery until the ensuing New Year.

St. Bernard, the Abbot, made application of water for another purpose. Butler says of him, that he once happened to fix his eyes on the face of a woman; but immediately reflecting that this was a temptation, he ran to a pond, and leaped up to the neck into the water, which was then as cold as ice, to punish himself, and to vanquish the enemy!

There is a second incident connected with water, that will bear to be told as an illustration, at least, of old times. When Patricius was Bishop of Prusa, the Proconsul Julius resorted thither to the famous baths, and was restored to such vigorous health thereby, that he not only made sacrifice of thanksgiving to Esculapius and Health, but required the Bishop to follow his example. The Prelate declined, and the Proconsul ordered him to be thrown into a caldron of boiling water, by which he was no more affected than if he had been enjoying a bath of tepid rose-water. Whereupon he was taken out and beheaded. The power that kept the water cool did not interfere to blunt the axe.

We have seen the reverence paid by certain “ancients of old” to the supposed divinities whose crystal thrones were veiled beneath the waves. Men under a better dispensation have shown, perhaps, a worse superstition. Bede makes mention of a Monk who thought he would purify his sin-stained spirit by actual ablution. He had, the church-historian tells us, a solitary place of residence assigned him in the monastery, adjacent to a river: into the latter he was accustomed to plunge, by way of penance to his body. He went manfully to the bottom, and his mouth was no sooner again in upper air, than it was opened to give utterance to lusty prayer and praise. He would sometimes thus stand for hours, up to the neck, and uttering his orisons aloud. He was in full dress when this penance was performed, and, on coming from the stream, he let his wet, and sometimes frozen, garments dry upon his person. A Friar, once seeing him break the ice, in order that he might make his penitential plunge, expressed shiveringly his wonder at the feat: “It must be so very cold,” said the Friar. “I have seen greater cold,” was the sole remark of the devotional diver. “Such austerity I never beheld,” exclaimed another spectator. “I have beheld far greater,” replied the Monk. “And thus,” adds the historian, as simply as any of them, “thus he forwarded the salvation of many by his words and example.”

Connected with a pious man of our own time, I may mention an incident touching water, which is rather remarkable:—the person to whom I allude is Bishop Gobat, of Jerusalem. He states, in his last Annual Letter, that he is building a school which will cost him about £600: the school is not yet finished; but the water used for mixing the mortar has already cost the enormous sum of £60. It is, in fact, a luxury which must be paid for. Where it is so dear, it were well if the people never were thirsty; and there were such people of old.

The late Vice-Chancellor of England, Sir Lancelot Shadwell, was as indefatigable a bather as the Monk noticed by Bede. Every morning throughout the year, during his residence at Barnes Elms, he might be seen wrestling joyously with the Thames. It is said that, on one occasion, a party, in urgent need of an injunction, after looking for the Judge in a hundred places where he was not to be found, at length took boat, and encountered him as he was swimming in the river. There he is said to have heard the case, listening to the details as the astonished applicants made them, and now and then performing a frolicsome “summersault,” when they paused for want of breath. The injunction was granted, it is said; after which the applicants left the Judge to continue his favourite aquatic sport by himself.

If the late amiable and able Vice-Chancellor was a water-lawyer, so was the late Archdeacon Singleton a water-divine. When tutor to the young Lords Percy, he, and the eldest of the sons of the then Duke of Northumberland,—Hugh, Earl Percy,—were expert swimmers, and often, by their achievements, excited the admiration of less daring venturers. The Archdeacon was accustomed to float away for miles from Sion, depending upon the tide to float him back again. At first, many a boatman looked inquiringly at the motionless body carrying on with the stream; but, when he was better known, his appearance thus excited no more surprise than if he had been in an outrigger, calmly taking a pull before the hour of dinner.

With respect to water-drinkers, they seem to have abounded among the good old Heathens, of whom so many stories are told that we are not called upon to believe.

Aristotle, who, like Dr. Macnish, wrote an “Anatomy of Drunkenness,” (Περὶ Mέθης,) states therein, that he knew, or had heard, of many people who never experienced what it was to be thirsty. Archonides, of Argos, is cited by him as a man who could eat salt beef for a week without caring to drink, therewith or thereafter. Mago, the Carthaginian, is famous for having twice crossed the Desert without having once tasted water, or any other beverage. The Iberians, wealthy and showy people as they were, were water-drinkers; and it was peculiar to some of the Sophists of Elis, that they lived upon nothing but water and dried figs. Their bodily strength, which was great, is said to have been the result of such diet; but, it is added, that the pores of their skin exuded any thing but a celestial ichor, and that, whenever they went to the baths, all the other bathers fled, holding their offended noses between their fingers! Matris, of Athens, lived all his life upon myrtle-berries and water; but, as nobody knows how long he did live, it would be rather rash to imitate him in hopes of obtaining extension of existence. Lamprus, the musician, was a water-drinker, as were Polemon, the Academician, and Diocles, of Peparethus; but, as they were never famous for any thing else, they are hardly worth citing. It is different when we contrast Demosthenes with Demades. Demosthenes states, in his second Philippic, that he was a water-drinker; and Pytheas was right, when he bade the Athenians remark, that the sober demagogue was, like Dr. Young, in fact, constantly engaged in solemn Night Thoughts. “Not so your other demagogue, Demades,” said Pytheas; “he is an unclean fellow, who is daily drunk, and who never comes into your assemblies but to exhibit his enormous paunch.” Such was the style of election speeches in Greece; and it has a smack of the hustings, and, indeed, of the market, too, in Covent Garden.

To turn from old to modern mythology, I may notice that water entered into the old sports of St. Distaff’s Day, or the morrow after Twelfth Day. It is thus alluded to by one whose “mind was jocund, but his life was chaste,”—the lyric Parson of Dean Priors:—

“Partly work and partly play

Ye must, on St. Distaff’s Day.

From the plough soon free your team,

Then come home and fother them.

If the maids a-spinning go,

Burn the flax, and fire the tow,

Scorch their plackets, but beware

That ye singe no maiden-hair.

Bring in pails of water then,

Let the maids bewash the men.

Give St. Distaff all the right,

Then bid Christmas sport ‘Good-night;’

And next morrow ev’ry one

To his own vocation.”

When Herrick wrote these lines, I do not know how it may have been at Dean Priors, but London was but indifferently supplied with water. But now London is supplied with water from eight different sources. Five of them are on the north, or Middlesex, side of London, three on the Southwark and Surrey side. The first comprise the New River, at Islington; the East London, at Old Ford, on the Lea; the West Middlesex, on the Thames, at Brentford and Hammersmith; and the Chelsea and Grand Junction, on the same river, at Chelsea. The south side is entirely supplied from the Thames, by the Southwark, Lambeth, and Vauxhall Waterworks, whose names are descriptive of their locality.

The daily supply amounts to about 35,000,000 of gallons, of which more than a third is supplied by the New River Company. The original projector of this Company was Sir Hugh Myddelton, who proposed to supply the London conduits from the wells about Amwell and Ware. The project was completed in 1613, to the benefit of posterity and the ruin of the projector. The old hundred-pound shares are now worth ten times their original cost.

In 1682 the private houses of the metropolis were only supplied with fresh water twice a week. Mr. Cunningham, in his “Handbook of London,” informs us that the old sources of supply were the Wells, or Fleet River, Wallbrook and Langbourne Waters, Clement’s, Clerk’s, and Holy Well, Tyburn, and the River Lea. Tyburn first supplied the City in the year 1285, the Thames not being pressed into the service of the City conduits till 1568, when it supplied the conduit at Dowgate. There were people who stole water from the pipes then, as there are who steal gas now. “This yere,” (1479,) writes an old chronicler of London, quoted by Mr. Cunningham, “a wax-charndler in Flete Strete had bi craft perced a pipe of the condite withynne the ground, and so conveied the water into his selar; wherefore he was judged to ride thurgh the Citee with a condite upon his hedde.” The first engine which conveyed water into private houses, by leaden pipes, was erected at London Bridge, in 1582. The pipes were laid over the steeple of St. Magnus; and the engineer was Maurice, a Dutchman. Bulmer, an Englishman, erected a second engine, at Broken Wharf. Previous to 1656, the Strand and Covent Garden, though so near to the river, were only supplied by water-tankards, which were carried by those who sold the water, or by the apprentice, if there were one in the house, whose duty it was to fill the house-tankard at the conduit, or in the river. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Ford erected water-works on the Thames, in front of Somerset House; but the Queen of Charles II.—like the Princess Borghese, who pulled down a church next to her palace, because the incense turned her sick, and the organ made her head ache—ordered the works to be demolished, because they obstructed a clear view on the river. The inhabitants of the district depended upon their tankards and water-carriers, until the reign of William III., when the York-buildings Waterworks were erected. The frequently-occurring name of Conduit-street, or Conduit-court, indicates the whereabout of many of the old sources whence our forefathers drew their scanty supplies.

Water is not necessarily unhealthy, because of a little earthy matter in it; mineral, or animal, or vegetable matter held in it, by solution, or otherwise, renders it decidedly unwholesome. Rain water is the purest water, when it is to be had by its natural distillation in the open fields. When collected near towns, it should never be used without being previously boiled and strained.

The hardness of water is generally caused by the presence of sulphate of lime. Horses commonly refuse to drink hard water,—a water that can make neither good tea, nor good beer, and which frequently contains many salts. Soft water, which is a powerful solvent of all vegetable matters, is to be preferred for all domestic purposes. River water is seldom pure enough for drinking. Where purest, it has lost its carbonic acid from long exposure; and in the neighbourhood of cities it is often a slow poison, and nothing more, scarcely to be rescued from the name by the process of filtration. London is still supplied, at a very costly price, with water which is “offensive to the sight, disgusting to the imagination, and destructive to the health.” Thames water, as at present flowing into our houses, is at once the jackal and aide-de-camp of cholera. People are apt to praise it, as being the water from which is made the purest porter in the world; but it is a well-known fact, that the great London brewers never employ it for that purpose.

The more a spring is drawn from, the softer the water will become; hence old wells furnish a purer water than those which are more recent; but a well of soft water is sensibly hardened by a coating of bricks. To obviate this, the bricks should be coated with cement. Snow water deserves a better reputation than it has acquired. Lake water is fitted only for the commonest household detergent purposes. But the salubrity of water is converted into poison by the conveyances which bring it almost to our lips; and we have not yet adopted in full the recommendation of Vitruvius and Columella to use pipes of earthenware, as being not only cheaper, but more durable and more wholesome, than lead. We still convey away refuse water in earthenware, and bring fresh water into our houses in lead! The noted choleraic colic of Amsterdam, in the last century, was entirely caused by the action of vegetable matter in the water-pipes.

Filtration produces no good effect upon hard water. The sulphate of lime, and still more the super-carbonate of lime, are only to be destroyed by boiling. Boiled water, cooled, and agitated in contact with the atmosphere, before use, is a safe and not an unpleasant beverage. It is essential that the water be boiling when “toast and water” is the beverage to be taken.

Water, doubtless, is the natural drink of man—in a natural state. It is the only liquid which truly appeases thirst; and a small quantity is sufficient for that effect. The other liquids are, for the most part, palliatives merely. If man had kept to water, the saying would not be applicable to him, that “he is the only animal privileged to drink without being thirsty.” But, then, where would the medical profession have been?

But he does well who, at all events, commences the day with water and prayer. With such an one we go hand in hand, not only in that service, but, as now, to Breakfast.

BREAKFAST.

Swift lent dignity to this repast, and to laundresses partaking of it, when he said, in illustration of modern Epicureanism, that “the world must be encompassed before a washerwoman can sit down to breakfast.”

Franklin, who made a “morality” of every sentiment, and put opinions into dramatical action, has a passage in some one of his Essays, in which he says, that “Disorder breakfasts with Plenty, dines with Poverty, sups with Misery, and sleeps with Death.” It is an unpleasant division of the day, but it is truly described, as far as it goes. On the other hand, it is not to be concluded that Disorder is the favourite guest of Abundance; and I do not know any one who has described a plentiful breakfast, with regularity presiding, better than another essayist, though one of a less matter-of-fact quality than Franklin,—I mean Leigh Hunt. In the “Indicator” he invites us to a “Breakfast in Cold Weather.” “Here it is,” he says, “ready laid. Imprimis, tea and coffee; secondly, dry toast; thirdly, butter; fourthly, eggs; fifthly, ham; sixthly, something potted; seventhly, bread, salt, mustard, knives, forks, &c. One of the first things that belong to a breakfast, is a good fire. There is a delightful mixture of the lively and the snug, in coming down to one’s breakfast-room of a cold morning, and seeing every thing prepared for us,—a blazing grate, a clean table-cloth and tea-things; the newly-washed faces and combed heads of a set of good-humoured urchins; and the sole empty chair, at its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. When we lived alone,” he adds, “we could not help reading at meals; and it is certainly a delicious thing to resume an entertaining book, at a particularly interesting passage, with a hot cup of tea at one’s elbow, and a piece of buttered toast in one’s hand. The first look at the page, accompanied by a co-existent bite of the toast, comes under the head of ‘intensities.’” Under the head of “&c.” in the above list, I should be disposed to include “sunshine;” for sunshine in a breakfast-room in winter, is almost as glorious a thing as the fire itself. It is a positive tonic; it cheers the spirits, strengthens the body, and promotes digestion. As for breakfast in hot weather, all well-disposed persons who have gardens take that meal, of course, in “the arbour,” and amid flowers. Breakfasts al-fresco are all the more intensely enjoyed, because so few may be discussed in the open air in a country whose summer consists of “three hot days and a thunder-storm;” and in a climate wherein, according to Boerhaave, people should not leave off their winter clothing till Midsummer-Day, resuming the same the next morning when they are dressing for breakfast! Walpole and Boerhaave are right; our summers do sometimes set in with extraordinary severity.

The breakfast of a Greek soldier, taken at dawn of day, required a strong head to bear it. It consisted of bread soaked in wine. If Princes were in the habit of so breaking their fast, we hardly need wonder at the denunciation in Ecclesiastes against those who eat in the morning. The Greek patricians sat daily down to but one solid meal. Soldiers and plebeians had less controllable appetites, and these could not be appeased with less than two meals a day. They were accounted peculiarly coarse people who consumed three. The Romans were, in this respect, similar to the Greeks. Fashionable people ate little or nothing before the hour when they compensated for a long fast by a daily meal, where they fed hugely. A simple breakfast, as soon as they awoke, of “bread and cheese,” has a very unclassical sound; but good authority assures us, that it was a custom duly honoured with much observance. Not of such light fare, however, was the breakfast of Galba. Suetonius says that the old Emperor used to cry for his morning repast long before day-break. This was in winter time. He took the meal in bed, and was probably induced to do so by indisposition; for he was a huge, ogre-like supper-eater,—eating much, leaving more, and ordering the remains to be divided among the attendants, who duly, rather than dignifiedly, scrambled for the same.

Modern epicures would hardly approve of some of the dishes half-consumed by the hungry Galba at breakfast; but potentates of our own days have made their first meal upon very questionable matter.

When Clapperton, the African traveller, breakfasted with the Sultan of Baussa, which is a collection of straggling villages on the banks of the Quorra, among the delicacies presented were a large grilled water-rat, and alligators’ eggs, fried or stewed. The company were much amazed at the singularity of taste which prompted the stranger to choose fish and rice in preference to those savoury viands. The Prince, who gave this public breakfast in honour of a foreign commoner, was disgusted at the fastidious super-delicacy of his guest. In the last century, our commoners used to give similar entertainments in honour of Princes.

“Ælia Lælia” Chudleigh, as Walpole calls the famous lady who was still more famous as Duchess of Kingston, gave splendidly untidy entertainments of this sort in a splendidly untidy mansion. Her suppers will be found noticed in another page. In 1763, she gave a concert and vast cold collation, or “breakfast,” in honour of Prince Edward’s birthday. The scene is admirably painted by Walpole. “The house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on one another’s backs, and loaded with terrenes, figures, filligrees, and every thing upon earth! Every favour she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden China. There is a large case full of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, tooth-pick cases, and all kinds of trinkets, things that she told me were her playthings. Another cupboard full of the finest japan, and candlesticks, and vases of rock-crystal, ready to be thrown down in every corner. But of all curiosities are the conveniencies in every bed-chamber; great mahogany projections, with brass handles, cocks, &c. I could not help saying it was the loosest family I ever saw.”

There was a philosopher of the same century, at whom even Walpole dared not have sneered. I allude to Dr. Black, whom Lavoisier called “the Nestor of the Chemical Revolution.” Dr. Black was famous for the frugality of his breakfasts, and for the singularity of his death, when seated at that repast. His usual fare was a little bread, a few prunes, and a measured quantity of milk and water. One morning in November, 1799, he was seated at this modest meal. His cup was in his hand, when the Inevitable Angel beckoned to him, and the Christian philosopher calmly obeyed. He placed the cup on his knees, “which were joined together, and kept it steady with his hand, in the manner of a person perfectly at his ease; and in this attitude he expired, without a drop being spilt, or a feature in his countenance changed, as if an experiment had been required, to show to his friends the facility with which he departed.” There was neither convulsion, shock, nor stupor, we are told, to announce or retard the approach of death. This was a more becoming end than that of another chemist, the younger Berthollet,—although in the latter there was something heroical, too. He had taken his last breakfast, when he calmly proceeded to a sacrifice which he made to the interests of science. He destroyed his life by enclosing himself in an atmosphere of carbonic acid. There he began registering all the successive feelings he experienced, which were such as would have been occasioned by a narcotic;—“a pause, and then an almost illegible word occurred. It is presumed that the pen dropped from his hand, and he was no more.”

I have spoken of winter and of summer breakfasts. I must have recourse to Mr. Forrester’s “Norway in 1848 and 1849,” to show what a breakfast for a traveller should be; namely, oatmeal porridge, or stir-about, with a slice of rye or wheaten bread. Such a breakfast, he says, will not only fortify the traveller for a lengthened period, but to the sedentary, the bilious, and the dyspeptic, its adoption will afford more relief than the best prescription of a physician. But this breakfast must be prepared with due care, and this is the fashion of it: “Take two or three handsfull of oatmeal; I prefer it of mixed coarse and fine meal, in the proportion of one third of the latter to two of the former. Mingle the meal in a basin of cold water, and pour it into a saucepan containing about a quart of boiling water; add a small portion of salt. Set the saucepan over the fire, and keep stirring it, sprinkling, from time to time, small quantities of the meal, till the composition boils, and has acquired the proper consistency. That may be known by its glutinous state as it drops from the spoon. Let it simmer for ten minutes, and then pour it, not into a deep dish, but into common dinner plates, and it will form a soft, thin, jellied cake; spoon out portions of this, and float it in new milk, adding moist sugar, to your taste.” For the benefit of others, I may add my testimony touching this recipe. I have strictly followed the instruction given, and I certainly never tasted any thing to equal the dish. It was execrable! But it has the double recommendation of being easy to digest, and of keeping off the sensation of hunger for a very long time. Use alone is needed to make it a popular breakfast, and he is a hero who uses it till he likes it. But it is time to consider the various

MATERIALS FOR BREAKFAST.

And first of milk. If Britons really have, what they so much boast of,—a birth-right,—the least disputable article of that class, is their undoubted right to that lacteal treasure which their mother holds from Nature, on trust, for their use and advantage.

It is a curious fact, that aristocratic infants are those who are most ordinarily deprived of this first right of their citizenship, and are sent to slake their thirst and fortify their thews and sinews at ochlocratic breasts. Jean Jacques Rousseau was not often right, but he was triumphantly so when he denounced the young and healthy mother, let her rank be what it might, who made surrender of what should be one of the purest of a young mother’s pleasures, and flung her child to the bosom of a stranger. Who can say what bad principles may not have been drawn in with these “early breakfasts?” Certainly this vicarious exercise of the office of maternity is an abomination; and the abomination of having one’s child suckled by a mercenary stranger can only be next in intensity to that of having him——but let us keep to “Table Traits.”

Milk is too popularly known to need description; but it is not all that is sold under that name that comes from the cow. The cow with one arm, that produces what fresh medical students call the aqua pumpaginis, has very much to do with the dairies of London. Metropolitan milk-maids are not as unsophisticated as the milk-maids of the olden time; if, indeed, maids or milk were particularly pure even then; for milk was a propitiatory offering to Mercury, and if ever there was a deity who loved mischief, why, Dan Mercury was the one.

In Rome milk was used as a cosmetic, and for baths as well as beverage. Five hundred asses supplied the bath and toilette-vases of the Empress Poppæa; and some dozen or two were kept to maintain the decaying strength of Francis I. Of course, asses’ milk became fashionable in Paris immediately, just as bolster cravats did with us, when the Regent took to them in order to conceal a temporary disease in the neck.

“Oil of milk” and “cow-cheese” were classical names for butter,—a substance which was not known in either Greece or Rome until comparatively late periods. Greece received it from Asia, and Rome knew it not as an article of food until the legionaries saw the use to which it was applied by the German matrons. The Scythians, like the modern Bedouins, were great butter-consumers. Their churners were slaves, captured in war, and blinded before they were chained to the sticks beside the tub, at which, with sightless orbs, they were set to work.

There have been seasons when, as now in Abyssinia, butter has been burned in the lamps in churches, instead of oil. The “butter-tower” of the cathedral at Rouen owes its distinctive appellation to its having been built from the proceeds of a tax levied in return for permissions to eat butter at uncanonical times; so that the tower is a monument of the violation of the ecclesiastical canons. But there is great licence in these matters; and chapels in Ireland have been constructed with money raised by putting up Moore’s erotic works to be raffled for, at half-a-crown a ticket!

Goats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all contributed their milk towards the making of cheese; and national prejudice has run so high on the question of superiority, that as many broken heads have been the result, as there have been rivulets of blood spilt at Dinant on the question of copper kettles. The Phrygian cheese is said to have owed its excellence to the fact, that it was made of asses’ and mares’ milk mixed together. I doubt, however, if the strong-smelling Phrygian cheese was equal to our Stilton,—which, by the way, is not made at Stilton,—and whose ripeness has been judiciously assisted by the addition of a pint of Madeira. Delicate persons at Rome breakfasted on bread and cheese,—principally goat cheese. It was administered, on the same principle that we prescribe rump-steak, as strengthening. People in rude health flourished in spite of it, and therefore ailing people must, it was thought, be invigorated because of it. However, our own system is less open to objection than that of the ancient faculty.

I do not know whether mothers will consider it complimentary or not; but it is a fact, that the milk of asses more nearly resembles human milk than any other. Like the human milk, it contains more saccharine matter than that of the cow, and deposits a large proportion of curd by mere repose.

Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and but slightly excites to vascular action. It is stringent, however, and has a tendency to create acidity; but an addition of oatmeal gruel will correct both these matters. Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and simmered with the milk, is of highly nourishing quality; but it is sometimes more than weak stomachs can bear. Lime-water with milk is recommended as sovereign against the acidity which milk alone is apt to create in feeble stomachs.

Eggs have been as violently eulogized as they have been condemned, and both in extremes. In some parts of Africa, where they are very scarce, and the Priests are very fond of them, it has been revealed to the people, that it is sacrilege for any but clerical gentlemen to eat eggs! The lay scruple, if I may so speak, is quieted by the assurance, that, though the sacred hens produce only for the servants at the altar, the latter never address themselves to the food in question, without the whole body of the laity profiting thereby! I suppose that Dissenters naturally abound in this part of Africa. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as vicarious feeding. Feeding is a duty which every man is disposed to perform for himself, whether it be expected of him or not. All the eggs in Africa, passing the œsophagus of a Priest, could hardly nourish a layman, even though the eggs were as gigantic as those which an old author says are presented by ladies in the moon to their profoundly delighted husbands, and from which spring young babies, six feet high, and men at all points.

If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable in this respect, the Egyptian shepherds on earth were not less so in another: they had a singular method of cooking eggs, without the aid of fire. They laid them in a sling, and then applied so violent a rotatory motion thereto, that they were heated and cooked by the very friction of the air through which they passed!

Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Livia was told, just before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch one in her bosom, and that the sex of the chick would foretell that of the expected little stranger. In Rome and Greece eggs were among the introductory portions of every banquet. But Rome knew only of twenty different manners of cooking them. What an advance in civilization has been made in Paris, which, according to Mr. Robert Fudge, boasts of six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs!

Eggs, filled with salt, used to be eaten by curious maidens, after a whole day’s fasting, on St. Agnes’ Eve: the profit of such a meal was, that she who partook of it had information, in her after-dreams, of that very interesting personage, her future husband!

There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that he could tell, by the look of the egg, whether the bird would be worth any thing or not. He reminds me of an old Monk I heard of, when in Prague, who, on a man passing him, could tell whether he were an honest man, or a knave, by the smell! But the Welsh weaver was even more clever than this. He could not only judge of eggs, but hatch them. A badger once carried off his sitting-hen, and no plumed nurse was near to supply her place. The weaver, thereupon, took the eggs (there were six of them) to bed with him, and in about two days hatched them all! Of this brood he only reared a cock and a hen. The cock was a gallant bird, that used to win flitches of bacon for his master at cock-fights; and the hen was as prolific as Mrs. Partlett could have desired. The result was, that they kept their step-mother, the weaver, in bacon and eggs for many a month; and the two days spent in bed were not so entirely thrown away as might, at first sight, appear.

Let it be understood that eggs may lose their nourishment by cooking. The yolk, raw or very slightly boiled, is exceedingly nutritious. It is, moreover, the only food for those afflicted with jaundice. When an egg has been exposed to a long continuance of culinary heat, its nature is entirely changed. A slightly-boiled egg, however, is more easy of digestion than a raw one. The best accompaniment for a hard egg is vinegar. Raw eggs have a laxative effect; hard-boiled, the contrary. There is an idiosyncrasy in some persons, which shows itself in the utter disgust which they experience, not only against the egg itself, but also against any preparation of which it forms an ingredient, however slight. Eggs should always be liberally accompanied by bread;—of which I will now say a few words, and first of

CORN.

Our first parents received the mission to cultivate the garden which was given them for a home. Their Hebrew descendants looked upon tillage of all descriptions with a reverence worthy of the authority which they professed to obey. The sons of the tribes stood proudly by the plough, the daughters of the patriarchs were gleaners, warriors lent their strength in the threshing barn, Kings guided oxen, and Prophets were summoned from the furrows to put on their mantles, and go forth and tell of things that were to come. What Heaven had enjoined, the law enforced. The people were taught to love and hold by the land which was in their own possession. To alienate it was to commit a crime. And it is from this ancient rule, probably, that has descended to us the feeling which universally prevails,—that he alone is aristocratic, has the best of power, who is lord of the land upon which he has built his earthly tabernacle.

The fields of Palestine were fertile beyond what was known elsewhere; her cattle produced more abundantly, and the very appellations of many of her localities have reference to the beauty and the blessings showered down upon them by the Lord.

Next to it, perhaps, in richness and productiveness, was Egypt, the home of fugitives from other homes where temporary famine reigned. Egypt was long the granary of the Roman empire, and twenty million bushels of corn was the life-sustaining tribute which she annually poured into the store-houses of Imperial Rome. That territory could hardly be more productive, of which an old Latin author speaks, and touching which he says, that a rod thrust into the soil at night would be found budding before morning. And this ancient story, I may notice, has been the venerable father of a large family of similar jokes among our Transatlantic cousins.

The Egyptians recognised Osiris as their instructor how to subdue and use the earth. The Greeks took the teaching from Ceres. Romulus, too, acknowledged the divine influence; and his first public act, as King, was to raise the twelve sons of his nurse into a priesthood, charged with watching over the fields, and paying sacrifice and prayer to Jove for yearly increase of harvests.

It was a selfish wish; but not more so than that of the Italian peasants, who, when one who was a native of their district had been raised to the tiara, sent a delegation to request an especial favour at his hands. The new Pope looked on his old acquaintances benevolently, and bade them express their wish. “They wanted but a modest boon,” they replied: “nothing more than a declaration from the Pontiff that their district should be henceforth distinguished by its having two harvests every year!” And the obliging “successor of the Fisherman” smiled, and not only granted their request, but promised more than he was petitioned for. “To do honour to my old friends,” said he, “not alone shall they have two harvests every year, but henceforth the year in their district shall be twice as long as it is in any other!” And therewith the simple people departed joyously.

The older Romans honoured agriculture, as did the Jews. Their language bore reference to this, their coin was stamped with symbols in connexion therewith, and their public treasury “pascua” showed, by its name, that “pasturage” was wealth. So he who was rich in minted coin enjoyed the pecunia, or “money,” for which “flocks” (pecus) were bought and sold. The owner of an “estate” (locus) was locuples, a term for a man well endowed with worldly goods; and he was in possession of a “salary,” who had his salarium, his allowance of salt-money, or of salt, wherewith to savour the food by which he lived.

The Greeks refreshed the mouths of their ploughing oxen with wine. The labour was considerable; for, although the plough was light, it lacked the conveniencies of the more modern implement. Like the Anglo-Norman plough, it had no wheels: the wheeled plough is the work of the inventive Gauls.

The French Republicans made a show of paying honour to agriculture by public demonstrations, the chief actors in which were the foremost men in the Land of Equality. They, absurdly enough, took their idea from the example presented them by a Monarch, all of whom they pronounced execrable; and by one, too, who was the most despotic upon earth,—the Emperor of China.

And, in the case of the Emperor, there probably was more ostentation than any better motive for the act. Grimm, in his “Correspondence,” says, truly enough, that the ceremony is a fine one, which places the Emperor of China, every year, at the tail of the plough; but, as he adds, it is possible that, like much of the etiquette of European Courts, such a custom may have sunk into a mere observance, exercising no influence on the public mind. “I defy you,” he says, “to find a more impressive ceremony than that by which the Doge of Venice yearly declares himself the husband of the Adriatic Sea. How exalting!—how stimulating!—how proudly inspiring for the Venetians, when their nation was, in reality, sovereign of the seas! But now it is little more than a ridiculous sport, and without any other effect than that of attracting a multitude of people to the Fair of the Ascension.”

Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, was honourable in one; namely, in exempting from arrest for debt all persons engaged in the cultivation of land, “with intent to raise grain and fruit necessary for the sustenance of men and beasts.” All the property of such husbandmen was alike exempted from seizure; and it strikes us, that this was a much more reasonably-founded exemption than that with which we endow roué Members of Parliament, who have no excuse for exceeding their income. They are free from arrest for six weeks from the prorogation of Parliament; and this is the cause of the farce which is so often played in the autumn and winter, when Parliament is “further prorogued.” The Great Council would be all the better for the absence of men who so far forget their duty as to cheat her Majesty’s lieges by exceeding their own income. The Senate could better spare the spendthrifts, than the land could spare the presence of him whose mission it is to render it productive.

Wheat is a native of Asia,—some say, of Siberia; others, of Tartary; but it is a matter of doubt, whether it can now be found there growing in a wild state. The Romans created a corn-god, and then asked its protection. The powerful deity was called Robigus, and he was solemnly invoked, on every 25th of April, to keep mildew from the grain. The Romans had a reverence for corn, but barley was excepted from this homage; and to threaten to put an offending soldier on rations of barley, was to menace him with disgrace. The Italian antipathy still exists, if we may believe the Italian Professor, who, being offered a basin of gruel, (made from barley,) declared its proper appellation to be “acqua crudele.” He accounted of it, as Pliny did of rye, that it was detestable, and could only be swallowed by an extremely hungry man. Oats were only esteemed a degree higher by Virgil. The poet speaks of them almost as disparagingly as Johnson did, when he described them as “food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland.” The grain, however, found a good advocate in him who asked, “——where did you ever see such horses and such men?” The meal is, nevertheless, of a heating quality, and certain cutaneous diseases are traced to a too exclusive use of it. But oatmeal cakes are not bad eating,—where better is not to be procured,—though they are less attractive to the palate than those sweet buns made from sesame grain, and which the Romans not only swallowed with delight, but used the name proverbially. The lover who was treating his mistress to sugared phrases, was said to be regaling her with “sesame cakes.” This sort of provision was very largely dealt in by Latin lovers. It was to be had cheaply; and nymphs consumed as fast as swains presented.

If lovers gave the light bread of persuasion to win a maiden’s affection, the Government distributed solid loaves, or corn to make them with, to the people, in order to gain the popular esteem, and suppress sedition. In some cases, it was as a “poor’s rate” paid by the Emperors, and costing them nothing. In too many cases, it was ill applied; and if Adrian daily fed all the children of the poor, other imperial rulers showered their tens of thousands of bushels daily on an idle populace and a half-dressed soldiery. It was easily procured. Sixty millions of bushels—twenty times that number of pounds’ weight—were supplied by Africa; and those “sweet nurses of Rome,” the islands of the Mediterranean, also poured into the imperial granaries an abundant tribute of the golden seed. It is a fact, however, that neither Romans nor Gauls were, till a late period, acquainted with the method of making fermented bread.

Ambrosia, nine times sweeter than honey, was the food of the gods; the first men existed on more bitter fare,—bread made from acorns. Ceres has the honour of having introduced a better fare. Men worshipped her accordingly; and, abandoning acorns, took also to eating the pig, now allowed to fatten on them at his leisure. Ceres and King Miletus dispute the renown of having invented grinding-stones. The hand-mill was one of the trophies which the Roman eagles bore back with them from Asia. Mola, the goddess charged therewith, looked to the well-being of mills, millers, and bread. In Greece, Mercury had something to do with this. It was he, at least, who sent to the Athenian market-women, selling bread, their customers; and, as he was the God of Eloquence, it is, doubtless, from this ancient source that all market-women are endowed with shrewdness and loquacity.

The Athenian bread-sellers are said to have possessed both. Our ladies of the Gate, in Billing’s Ward, are, probably, not behind them; and I am inclined to think that a true old-fashioned Bristol market-woman would surpass both. Let me cite an instance.

Some years ago, an old member of this ancient sisterhood was standing at her stall, in front of one of the Bristol banks. She had a £10 Bank-of-England note in her hand; and as, in her younger days, she had been nurse-maid in the family of one of the partners, she thought she might venture to enter, and ask for gold for her note. She did so; but it was at a time when guineas were worth five-and-twenty shillings a-piece, and gold was scarce, and——in short, she met with a refusal. The quick-witted market-woman, without exhibiting any disappointment, thereupon asked the cashier to let her have ten of the bank’s £1 notes in exchange for her “Bank-of-Englander.” The cashier was delighted to accommodate her in this fashion. The exchange being completed, the old lady, taking up one of the provincial notes, read aloud the promise engraved upon it, to pay the bearer in cash. “Very good!” said she, with a gleesome chuckle, “now gi’ me goold for your notes, or I’ll run to the door, and call out, ‘Bank’s broke!’” There was no resisting this, and the market-woman departed triumphantly with her gold. Light-heeled Mercury could not have helped her better than she helped herself, by means of her own sharp wit.

Despite what Virgil says of oats, the Roman soldiery, for many years, had no better food than gruel made from oatmeal, and sharpened for the appetite by a little vinegar. The vinegar was an addition suggested by Numa, who also not only improved the very rude ideas which previously prevailed with regard to the making of bread, but turned baker himself, and sent his loaves to the ovens which he had erected, and to the bakers whom he had raised into a “guild,” placed under the protection of the goddess Fornax;—and a very indifferent, nay, disreputable, deity she was! The public ovens were to the people of Rome what a barber’s shop is to a village in war time,—the temple of gossip. It had been well had they never been any thing worse! The vocation of baker was hereditary in a family; the son was compelled to follow his father’s calling. Occasionally, a member of the fraternity was offered a senatorship; but then he was required to make over his property, realized by baking, to his successors; and, consequently, the honour was as deeply declined as the London mayoralty would be by the Governor of the Bank of England.

If Fornax was the goddess to whose patronage the bakers were consigned by the State, she suffered by the religious liberty exercised by the bakers themselves, who chose to pay adoration to Vesta. Vesta was the very antipodes in character and attributes to Fornax; and the selection of the former would seem to show, that the generally reviled bakers could not only praise virtue, but practise it.

Endless were the varieties of bread sold in the markets at Rome. There was Cappadocian bread for the wealthy; pugilistic loaves for the athletæ; batter-bread for the strong, and Greek rolls for the weak, of stomach: and there were the prepared bread poultices, which people who, like Pompey’s young soldiers, were afraid of injuring their complexion, were wont to keep applied to their cheeks during the hours of sleep. Anadyomene so slumbering, with Adonis at her side similarly poulticed, can hardly be said to be a subject for a painter; and yet many a blooming Caia slept on the bosom of her Caius, and more panis madidus than blushes on the cheeks of either.

Pliny ventures on a strange statement with regard to oats. He says that oats and barley are so nearly allied, that when a man sows the one, he is not sure that he may not reap the other! He also illustrates the prolificness of millet, by asserting that a single grain produced “innumerable ears of corn; and that a bushel (twenty pounds’ weight) of millet would make more than sixty pounds of wholesome bread!” The Romans and the Greeks also appear to have been acquainted with Indian corn.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, much as he affected to love nature,—and he was himself one of the most artificial of characters,—knew very little about her, or her productions. Some of our great men are described as being in much the same condition of ignorance. Three poets of the last century were one day walking through a field, promising a glorious harvest of grain. One of them extolled the beauty of the wheat. “Nay,” said the second, “it is rye.” “Not so,” remarked the third, “it is a field of barley.” A clown, standing by, heard and marvelled at the triple ignorance. “You are all wrong, gentlemen,” said he; “those be oats.” The poets were town-bred; or were of that class of people who go through a country with their eyes open, and are unable to distinguish between its productions. I have seen Londoners contemplating, with a very puzzled look, the “canary” crops growing in the vicinity of Herne Bay; and I was once gravely asked if it was “teazle!”

These crops are, as I was told by a grower, “capricious.” They will grow abundantly upon certain land having certain aspects; but where the aspect is changed, although the land be chemically the same, the canary will scarcely grow at all. It is shipped in large quantities from Herne Bay for London, where it is used for many purposes. None of its uses are so singular as one to which corn was applied, some thirty years ago, in the western settlements of America, namely, for stretching boots and shoes. The boot or shoe was well filled with corn, and made secure by such tight tying that none could escape. It was then immersed for several hours in water; during which the leather was distended by the gradual swelling of the grain. After being taken from the water, a coating of neat’s-foot oil, laid on and left to dry, rendered the boot or shoe fit for wear.

A more interesting anecdote in connexion with corn, and illustrative of character, is afforded us by Dr. Chalmers in his Diary. The Doctor, as is well known,—and he was ever ready to confess his weakness,—occasionally let his warm temper get the better of his excellent judgment. Here is an instance, which shows, moreover, how Christian judgment recovered itself from the influence of human nature: “Nov. 20th, 1812.—Was provoked with Thomas taking it upon him to ask more corn for my horse. It has got feeble under his administration of corn, and I am not without suspicion that he appropriates it; and his eagerness to have it strengthens the suspicion. Erred in betraying anger to my servant and wife; and, though I afterwards got my feelings into a state of placidity and forbearance, upon Christian principles, was moved and agitated when I came to talk of it to himself. Let me take the corn into my own hand, but carry it to him with entire charity. O, my God, support me!” Was it not to Socrates that some one said?—“To judge from your looks, you are the best-tempered man in the world.” “Then my looks belie me,” replied the philosopher; “I have the worst possible temper, by nature; with the strongest possible control over it, by philosophy.” Chalmers was, in one sense, like Socrates; but the control over his stubborn infirmity had something better “than your philosophy” for its support.

Reverting to the feeding of horses, I may notice, that, according to the Earl of Northumberland’s “Household-Book,” the corn was not thrown loose into the manger, but made into loaves. It has been conjectured, that the English poor formerly ate the same bread. There can be no question about it; and even at the present time it is no uncommon sight, in some towns of the Continent, to see a driver feeding his horse from a loaf, and occasionally taking a slice therefrom for himself.

There is no greater consumer of corn in England than the pigeon. Vancouver, in laudable zeal for the hungry poor, calls pigeons “voracious and insatiate vermin.” He calculates the pigeons of England and Wales at nearly a million and a quarter; “consuming 159,500,000 pints of corn annually, to the value of £1,476,562. 10s.” It is impossible for calculation to be made closer. Darwin says of pigeons, that they have an organ in the stomach for secreting milk. And it is not alone in the way of devouring corn that they are destructive. In the “Philosophical Transactions,” it is mentioned that pigeons for many ages built under the roof of the great church of Pisa. Their dung spontaneously took fire, at last, and the church was consumed.

I have said that the Roman soldiers marched to victory under the influence of no more exciting stimulant than gruel and vinegar. A little oatmeal has often sustained the strength of our own legions in the hour of struggle. The Germans, brave as they are, sometimes require a more substantial support. Thus, after a defeat endured by the Great Frederick, hundreds of respectable burgesses of the province of Mark set out as volunteers for the royal army,—the Hellengers in white, the Sauerlanders in blue jackets,—each man with a stout staff in his hand, and a rye loaf and a ham on his back. “Fritz” glared with astonishment when they presented themselves at his head-quarters. “Where do you fellows come from?” said he. “From Mark, to help our King.” “Who doesn’t want you,” interrupted Fritz. “So much the better; we are here of our own accord.” “Where are your officers?” “We have none.” “And how many of you deserted by the way?” “Deserted!” cried the Markers indignantly: “if any of us had been capable of that, we should not be what we are,—volunteers.” “True!” said the King, “and I can depend upon you. You shall have fire enough soon to toast your bread and cook your hams by.”

When Henri IV. was besieging Paris, held by the Leaguers, the want most severely felt by the famished inhabitants was that of bread. The Guise party, who held the city,—and the most active agent of that party was the Duchess of Montpensier, the sister of Duke Henri of Guise,—endeavoured to keep life in the people by means that nature revolts at. When every other sort of food had disappeared, the Government within the walls distributed very diminutive rolls made of a paste, the chief ingredient in which was human bones ground to powder. The people devoured them under the name of “Madame de Montpensier’s cakes;”—no wonder that they soon after exultingly welcomed the entry of a King, who declared that his first desire was to secure to every man in France his “poule au pot!” But enough of bread. Let us examine briefly the subject of

BUTTER.

The illustrious Ude, or some one constituting him the authority for the nonce, has sneered at the English as being a nation having twenty religions, and only one sauce,—melted butter. A French commentator has added, that we have nothing polished about us but our steel, and that our only ripe fruit is baked apples. Guy Pantin traces the alleged dislike of the French of his day for the English, to the circumstance that the latter poured melted butter over their roast veal. The French execration is amusingly said to have been further directed against us, on account of the declared barbarism of eating oyster-sauce with rump-steak, and “poultice,” as they cruelly characterize “bread sauce,” with pheasant. But, to return to butter:—the spilling of it has more than once been elucidative of character. When, in the days of the old régime, an English servant accidentally let a drop or two of melted butter fall upon the silken suit of a French petit-maître, the latter indignantly declared that “blood and butter were an Englishman’s food.” The conclusion was illogical, but the arguer was excited. Lord John Townshend manifested better temper and wit, when a similar accident befell him, as he was dining at a friend’s table, where the coachman was the only servant in waiting. “John,” said my Lord, “you should never grease anything but your coach-wheels.”

It was an old popular error that a pound of butter might consist of any number of ounces. It is an equally popular error, that a breakfast cannot be, unless bread and butter be of it. Marcus Antoninus breakfasted on dry biscuits; and many a person of less rank, and higher worth, is equally incapable of digesting any thing stronger. Solid breakfasts are only fit for those who have much solid exercise to take after it; otherwise heartburn may be looked for. Avoid new bread and spongy rolls; look on muffins and crumpets as inventions of men of worse than sanguinary principles, and hot buttered toast as of equally wicked origin. Dry toast is the safest morning food, perhaps, for persons of indifferent powers of digestion; or they may substitute for it the imperial fashion set by Marcus Antoninus. Of liquids I may next speak; and in this our ancient friend, Tea, takes the precedence.

TEA.

The origin of tea is very satisfactorily accounted for by the Indian mythologists. Darma, a Hindoo Prince, went on a pilgrimage to China, vowing he would never take rest by the way; but he once fell asleep, and he was so angry with himself, on awaking, that he cut off his eye-lids, and flung them on the ground. They sprang up in the form of tea shrubs; and he who drinks of the infusion thereof, imbibes the juice of the eye-lids of Darma. Tea, however, is said to have been first used in China as a corrective for bad water; and that not at a remote date.

In the seventeenth century, half the physicians of Holland published treatises in favour of tea. It was hailed as a panacea, and the most moderate eulogizers affirmed that two hundred cups a day might be drunk without injury to the stomach of the drinker. In the ninth century, tea was taken in China simply as a medicine; and it then had the repute of being a panacea. The early Dutch physicians who so earnestly recommended its use as a common beverage, met with strenuous opposition. France, Germany, and Scotland, in the persons of Patin, Hahnemann, and Duncan, decried tea as an impertinent novelty, and the vendors of it as immoral and mercenary. Nor was Holland itself unanimous in panegyrizing the refreshing herb. Some, indeed, eulogized the infusion as the fountain of health, if not of youth; but others again, and those of the Dutch faculty, indignantly derided it as filthy “hay-water.” Olearius, the German, on the other hand, recognised its dietetic virtues as early as 1133; while a Russian Ambassador, at about the same period, refused a pound or two of it, offered him by the Mogul as a present to the Czar, on the ground that the gift was neither useful nor agreeable.

The Dutch appear to have been the first who discovered the value of the shrub, in a double sense. They not only procured it for the sake of its virtues, but contrived to do so by a very profitable species of barter. They exchanged with the Chinese a pound of sago for three or four pounds of tea; and it is very possible that each party, preferring its own acquisition, looked on the opposite party as duped.

Tea is supposed to have been first imported into England, from Holland, in 1666, by Lords Arundel and Ossory. We cannot be surprised that it was slow in acquiring the popular favour, if its original cost was, as it is said to have been, 60s. per pound. But great uncertainty rests as well upon the period of introduction, as upon the original importers, and the value of the merchandise. One fact connected with it is well ascertained; namely, that European Companies had long traded with China before they discovered the value and uses of tea.

It is said to have been in favour at the Court of Charles II., owing to the example of Catherine, his Queen, who had been used to drink it in Portugal. Medical men thought, at that time, that health could not be more effectually promoted than by increasing the fluidity of the blood; and that the infusion of Indian tea was the best means of attaining that object. In 1678, Bontekoe, a Dutch physician, published a celebrated treatise in favour of tea, and to his authority its general use in so many parts of Europe is to be attributed.

The first tea-dealer was also a tobacconist, and sold the two weeds of novelty together, or separately. His name was Garway, (“Garraway’s,”) and his locale, Exchange-alley. It was looked upon chiefly as a medicinal herb; and Garway, in the seventeenth century, not only “made up prescriptions,” in which tea was the sole ingredient, but parcels for presents, and cups of the infusion for those who resorted to his house to drink it over his counter. Its price then varied from 11s. to 50s. per pound. The taking tea with a visitor was soon a domestic circumstance; and, towards the end of the century, Lord Clarendon and Père Couplet supped together, and had a cup of tea after supper, an occurrence which is journalized by his Lordship without any remark to lead us to suppose that it was an extraordinary event.

Dr. Lettsom has written largely, and plagiarized unreservedly, on the subject of tea; adding, as Mr. Disraeli remarks, his own dry medical reflections to the sparkling facts of others; but he was the first, perhaps, who established the unwholesomeness of green tea. He “distilled some green tea, injected three drachms of the very odorous and pellucid water which he obtained, into the cavity of the abdomen and cellular membrane of a frog, by which he paralysed the animal. He applied it to the cavity of the abdomen and ischiatic nerves of another, and the frog died; and this he thought proved green tea to be unwholesome”—to the frogs, and so applied, as it undoubtedly was. Such experiments, however, are unsatisfactory. Nux vomica, for instance, deadly poison to man, may be taken, almost with impunity, by many animals.

The first brewers of tea were often sorely perplexed with the preparation of the new mystery. “Mrs. Hutchinson’s great grandmother was one of a party who sat down to the first pound of tea that ever came into Penrith. It was sent as a present, and without directions how to use it. They boiled the whole at once in a bottle, and sat down to eat the leaves with butter and salt, and they wondered how any person could like such a diet.”

Steele, in “The Funeral,” laughs at the “cups which cheer, but not inebriate.” “Don’t you see,” says he, “how they swallow gallons of the juice of tea, while their own dock-leaves are trodden under foot?”

What Bishop Berkeley did with “Tar Water,” when he made his Essay thereupon a ground for a Dissertation on the Trinity, Joseph Williams—“the Christian merchant” of the early and middle part of last century, whose biography is well known to serious readers—did, when he wrote to his friend Green upon the necessity of “setting the Lord always before us.” When treating of this subject, the pious layman adverts to a present of that new thing called “tea,” which Green had sent him, and which had lost some of its flavour in the transit. There is something amusing in the half sensual, half spiritual way in which worthy Joseph Williams mixes his Jeremiad upon tea with one upon human morals. “The tea,” he says, “came safe to hand, but it hath lost the elegant flavour it had when we drank of it at Sherborne, owing, I suppose, to its conveyance in paper, which, being very porous, easily admits effluvia from other goods packed up with it, and emits effluvia from the tea. Such are the moral tendencies of evil communications among men, which nothing will prevent, (like canisters for tea,) but taking to us the whole armour of God. Had the tea been packed up with cloves, mace, and cinnamon, it would have been tinctured with these sweet spices; so ‘he that walks with wise men shall be wise.’ He that converses with heaven-born souls, whose conversation is in heaven, whose treasure and whose hearts are there, will catch some sparks from their holy fire; but ‘evil communications corrupt good manners.’ I have put the tea into a canister, and am told it will recover its original flavour, as the pious soul which hath received some ill impressions from vicious or vain conversation will, by retiring from the world, by communing with his own heart, by heavenly meditation, and fervent prayer, recover his spiritual ardour.” The simile, however, limps a little; for if every man canistered himself, and a good example, from the world, the wide-spreading aroma of that example would never seductively insinuate itself into the souls of men. It is by contact we brighten, and sometimes suffer. We must not canister our virtue as Mr. Williams did his tea: the latter was for selfish enjoyment. A guinea may be kept for ever unstained by the commerce of the world, in the very centre of the chest of avarice; but what good does it do there? Let it circulate merrily through the hundred hands of the giant Industry, and there will be more profit than evil effected by the process. But good Joseph Williams would not have agreed with us, and he would take his saintly similes from traits of the table. “O that I may walk humbly,” he says, “and look on myself, when fullest of divine communications, but as a drinking-glass without a foot, and which, consequently, cannot stand of itself, nor retain what may be put into it.” A very tipsy-like simile!

I may be permitted to add that, after all, religion happily proved stronger than tea, but not without still stronger opposition; and we are told by the disgusted Connoisseur, that “persons of fashion cannot but lament that the Sunday evening tea-drinkings in Ranelagh were laid aside, from a superstitious regard to religion.” A remark which shows how very poor a connoisseur this writer was in matters of propriety. Not, indeed, that diet and divinity could not be seated at the same table. On Easter-day, for instance, the first dish that used to be placed before the jubilant guests was a red-herring on horseback, set in a corn salad. Some hundred and fifty years ago, too, there was a semi-religious, semi-roystering club held at the “Northern Ale-house in St. Paul’s Alley,” every member of which was of the name of Adam. It was formed in honour and remembrance of the first man. The honour was more than Adam deserved; for the first created man not only betrayed his trust, but he shabbily sought to lay the responsibility upon the first woman. And as for “remembrance,” he has managed to survive even the memory of the club founded by his namesakes, and long since defunct. The members were hard drinkers, but not of saffron posset, which Arabella, in “The Committee,” recommends as “a very good drink against the heaviness of the spirits.” The Adamites mostly died, as the legend says Adam himself did, of hereditary gout,—an assertion which would seem to indicate that the author of it was of Hibernian origin!

There are various passages of our poets which tend to show that “tea” and “coffee” became, very early, fixed social observances. Pope, writing, in 1715, of a lady who left town after the coronation of George I., says that she went to the country—

“To part her time ’twixt reading and Bohea,

To muse, and spill her solitary tea;

Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,

Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.”

At the same period, the more fortunate belles who remained in town made of tea a means for other ends than shortening time. Dr. Young, in his “Satires,” says of Memmia, that—

“Her two red lips affected zephyrs blow,

To cool the Bohea and inflame the beau;

While one white finger and a thumb conspire

To lift the cup and make the world admire.”

Dr. Parr’s delicate compliment is well known; but I may be pardoned, perhaps, for introducing it here. He was not very partial to the Thea Sinensis, though lauded so warmly by a French writer, as “nostris gratissima Musis;” but once being invited to take tea by a lady, he, with a mixture of wit and gallantry, exclaimed, “Nec teacum possum vivere, nec sine te!” The Christchurch men at Oxford were remarkable, at an early period, for their love of tea; and, in reference to it, they were pleasantly recommended to adopt as their motto: “Te veniente die, te decedente notamus.” In 1718, Pope draws an illustration from tea, when writing to Mr. Digby: “My Lady Scudamore,” he remarks jocosely, “from having rusticated in your company too long, really behaves herself scandalously among us. She pretends to open her eyes for the sake of seeing the sun, and to sleep because it is night; drinks tea at nine in the morning, and is thought to have said her prayers before; talks, without any manner of shame, of good books, and has not seen Cibber’s play of ‘The Nonjuror.’” This is a pleasant picture of the “good woman” of the last century. She drank tea at nine in the morning, not sleeping on till noon, to be aroused at last, like Belinda, by—

“Shock, who thought she slept too long,

Leap’d up and waked his mistress with his tongue.”

Tea is little nutritious; it is often injurious from being drunk at too high a temperature, when the same quantity of the fluid at a lower temperature would be beneficial. It is astringent and narcotic; but its effects are various on various individuals, and the cup which refreshes and invigorates one, depresses or unnaturally excites and damages the digestive powers of others. Green tea can in no case be useful, except medicinally, in cases where there has been excessive fatigue of the mind or body; and even then the dose should be small. Tea, as a promoter of digestion, or rather, as a comforter of the stomach when the digestive process has been completed, should not be taken earlier than from three to four hours after the principal meal. Taken too early, it disturbs digestion by arresting chymification, and by causing distension. The astringency of tea is diminished by adding milk, and its true taste more than its virtue is spoiled by the addition of sugar.

These remarks are applicable to tea in its pure state, and not to the adulterated messes which come from China, or are made up in England. If sloe leaves here are made to pass for Souchong, so also is many an unbroken chest of “tea” landed, which is largely composed of leaves that are not the least akin to the genuine shrub. Black teas are converted into green, some say by means of a poisonous dye, others by roasting on copper; but I do not think this process is extensively adopted. At one time the chests were rendered heavy by an adulterated mixture of a considerable quantity of tea, and a not inconsiderable quantity of earthy detritus, strongly impregnated with iron. But our searchers soon put a stop to this knavery. They just dipped a powerful magnet into the chest, stirred it about, and, when drawn out, the iron particles, if any, were sure to be found adhering to the irresistible “detective.” I have heard that Lady Morgan’s tea-parties, in Dublin, were remarkable for the excellent qualities both of the beverage and the company; and also for her Ladyship’s stereotyped joke, of “Sugar yourselves, gentlemen, and I’ll milk you all.”

Tea-parties, I may observe in conclusion, are not confined in China to festive occasions. Tea is solemnly drunk on serious celebrations, with squibs to follow. Thus, for instance, at the funeral of a Buddhist Priest, there is thought taken for the living as well as for the dead, for the appetites of mortals as well as for the gratification of the gods. The latter are presented with various sorts of food, save animal. It is placed on the altar, and it is eaten at night by the deities, of course. While the ceremonies preliminary to the interment are proceeding, a servant enters the temple, and hands tea round to the reverend gentlemen who are officiating! The interment usually takes place in the morning, and it is numerously attended; but if, as the long procession is advancing, the hour of breakfast should happen to arrive, the corpse is suddenly dropped in the highway, the entire assembly rush to their respective homes, and not till they have consumed their tea and toast, or whatever materials go to the constituting of a Chinese déjeûner, do they return to carry the corse to its final resting-place, and fire no end of squibs over it, in testimony of their affliction. Which done, more refreshment follows; and perhaps some of the mourners retire to Chinese taverns, where inviting placards promise them “A cup of tea and a bird’s nest for 4d.!”

COFFEE.

The English and French dispute the honour of being the first introducers of coffee into Western Europe. The Dutch assert that they assisted in this introduction; and, although coffee was not drunk at Rome, until long after it had been known to, and tasted by, Italian travellers at Constantinople, the Church looked with pleasure on a beverage, one effect of which was to keep both Priests and people awake.

An Arab author of the fifteenth century—Sherbaddin—asserts, that the first man who drank coffee was a certain Muphti of Aden, who lived in the ninth century of the Hegira, about A.D. 1500. The popular tradition is, that the Superior of a Dervish community, observing the effects of coffee-berries when eaten by some goats, rendering them much more lively and skittish than before, prescribed it for the brotherhood, in order to cure them of drowsiness and indolence.

It was originally known by the name of cahui or kauhi,—an orthography which comes near to that of the ingenious Town-Councillor of Leeds, who, writing out a bill of fare for a public breakfast, contrived to spell “coffee” without employing a single letter that occurs in that word,—to wit, kawphy!

Sandys, a traveller of the seventeenth century, gives it no very attractive character. Good for digestion and mirth, he allows it to be; but he says that in taste as in colour it is nearly as black as soot.

The coffee-houses of England take precedence of those of France, though the latter have more enduringly flourished. In 1652, a Greek, in the service of an English Turkey merchant, opened a house in London. “I have discovered his hand-bill,” says Mr. Disraeli, “in which he sets forth the virtue of the coffee drink, first publiquely made and sold in England, by Pasqua Rosee, of St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, at the sign of his own head.” Mr. Peter Cunningham cites a MS. of Oldys in his possession, in which some fuller details of much interest are given. Oldys says, “The first use of coffee in England was known in 1657, when Mr. Daniel Edwards, a Turkey merchant, brought from Smyrna to London one Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth, who prepared this drink for him every morning. But the novelty thereof drawing too much company to him, he allowed his said servant, with another of his son-in-law’s, to sell it publicly; and they set up the first coffee-house in London, in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill. But they separating, Pasqua kept in the house; and he who had been his partner obtained leave to pitch a tent, and sell the liquor, in St. Michael’s churchyard.” Aubrey, in his Anecdotes, states that the first vendor of coffee in London was one Bowman, coachman to a Turkey merchant, named Hodges, who was the father-in-law of Edwards, and the partner of Pasqua, who got into difficulties, partly by his not being a freeman, and who left the country. Bowman was not only patronized, but a magnificent contribution of one thousand sixpences was presented to him, wherewith he made great improvements in his coffee-house. Bowman took an apprentice, (Paynter,) who soon learnt the mystery, and in four years set up for himself. The coffee-houses soon became numerous: the principal were Farres’, the Rainbow, at the Inner-Temple Gate, and John’s, in Fuller’s Rents. “Sir Henry Blount,” says Aubrey, “was a great upholder of coffee, and a constant frequenter of coffee-houses.”

The frequenters of these places, however, were considered as belonging to the idle and dissipated classes; and the reputation was not altogether undeserved. Respectable people denounced the coffee-drinking evils, illustriously obscure and loyal people dreaded the politics that were discussed at the drinking, and tipsy satirists hurled strong contempt and weak verse at the new-fangled fashion of abandoning Canary wine for the Arabian infusion. The fashion, however, extended rapidly; the more so, that cups were soon to be had at so low a price, that the shops where they were sold went by the name of “Penny Universities.” The ladies, who were excluded from public participation in the bitter enjoyment, made some characteristic complaints against the male drinkers, and intimated that the indulgence of coffee-drinking would in time deteriorate, if not destroy, the human race; but the imbibers heeded not the complaint, their answer to which was that of Béranger’s gay marital philosopher:—

“Nous laisserions finir le monde,

Si nos femmes le voulaient bien.”

While the ladies, through their poetical representatives, were complaining, male philanthropists quickly discerned the social uses of the cup; and Sir Henry Blount acknowledges, with grateful pleasure, that the custom, on the part of labouring men and apprentices, of drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, instead of their ordinary matinal draught of beer or wine, was chiefly owing to Sir James Muddiford, “who introduced the practice hereof first in London.”

The Government of the Stuarts, hating free discussion, and not particularly caring for wit, watched the coffee-houses with much jealousy, and placed as much restriction upon them as they possibly could strain the law to. The vexatious proceeding did not secure the desired result; and the coffee-house wits laughed at the Government. The wits, however, were not always successful either in their praise of, or satire against, coffee. Pepys, on the 15th of October, 1667, went to the Duke’s House, to see the comedy of “Taruga’s Wiles; or, the Coffee-House,” of which he says, “The most ridiculous, insipid play that ever I saw in my life; and glad we were that Betterton had no part in it.” But Pepys was probably not in the true vein to decide critically that night; for his pretty maid Willett was sitting at his side; and his wife, who was on the other, spoiled the effect of the play by her remarks on the girl’s “confidence.” Perhaps one of the most curious apologies for coffee-houses was that of Aubrey, who declared that he should never have acquired so extensive an acquaintance but for “the modern advantages of coffee-houses in this great city, before which men knew not how to be acquainted but with their own relations and societies.” And Aubrey, who has been called the small Boswell of his day, “was a man who had more acquaintances than friends.”

Yemen is the accepted birth-place, if we may so speak, of the coffee-tree. Pietro de la Vallé introduced it into Italy, La Royne into Marseilles, and Thevenot brought it with him to Paris. In 1643, a Levantine opened a coffee-house in Paris, in the Place du Petit Chatelet; but it was Soleiman Aga, Turkish Ambassador in Paris, in 1689, who was the medium through which coffee found its way into the realm of fashion. Had it been really what some have supposed it to have been,—the black broth of the Lacedæmonians,—he could have made it modish by his method of service. This was marked by all the minute details of oriental fashion,—small cups and foot-boys, gold-fringed napkins and pages, coffee wreathing with smoke, and Ganymedes wreathed with garlands, the first all aroma, and the hand-bearers all otto of roses: the whole thing was too dazzling and dramatic to escape adoption. But the intolerable vulgar would imitate their betters, and coffee became as common at taverns as wine, beer, and smoking. It would have inevitably been abandoned to coarse appetites only, but for François Procope, a Sicilian, who, in the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, exactly opposite to the old play-house in the Faubourg St. Germain, opened an establishment expressly for the sale of coffee, but with such innocent additional articles as ices, lemonade, and the like harmless appliances, to make pleasant the seasons in their change. The Café Procope became the immediate resort of all the wits, philosophers, and refined roués of Paris. There Rousseau wrote or repeated the lines which brought him into such frequent trouble. There Piron muttered the verses with which the incitement of devils inspired him. There Voltaire tried to rule supreme, but found himself in frequent bitter contest with Palissot and Freron. The Café Procope was the morning journal, the foreign news-mart, the exchange,—literary, witty, and emphatically charming. There Lamothe renewed the contest between the ancient and modern, the classical and the romantic, drama. There the brilliant Chevalier de St. Georges gave lessons in fencing to the men of letters; and thence Dorat addressed his amorous missives to Mademoiselle Saunier. There Marmontel praised Clairon, and the Marquis de Bièvre tried his calembourgs; and there Duclos and Mercier made their sketches of society, at once serious and sarcastic. The universal favour in which coffee is still held in Paris, and the crowds which still wait on “Andromaque,” sufficiently belie the famous prophecy of Madame de Sévigné, that “coffee and Racine would have their day.” The dark infusion reigns without a rival, the demi-tasse follows dinner oftener than “grace,” Rachel helps to keep Racine alive, and café, in its turn, has the reputation of being one of the favourite stimulants of the great tragédienne.

With regard to the making of coffee, there is no doubt that the Turkish method of pounding the coffee in a mortar is infinitely superior to grinding it in a mill, as with us. But after either method the process recommended by M. Soyer may be advantageously adopted; namely, “Put two ounces of ground coffee into a stew-pan, which set upon the fire, stirring the coffee round with a spoon until quite hot, then pour over a pint of boiling water; cover over closely for five minutes, pass it through a cloth, warm again, and serve.”

The chemist Laplace explained to Napoleon the results of various methods of manipulation. “How is it, Sir,” said the Emperor, “that a glass of water in which I melt a lump of sugar, always appears to me to be superior in taste to one in which I put the same quantity of powdered sugar?” “Sire,” said the sage, “there exist three substances, whose elements are precisely the same; namely, sugar, gum, and starch. They only differ under certain conditions, the secret of which Nature has reserved to herself; and I believe that it is possible, that, by the collision caused by the pestle, some of the portions of the sugar pass into the condition of gum or starch, and thence arises the result which has been observed.”

Medical men are widely at issue as to the merits of coffee. All, however, are agreed that it stimulates the brain, and banishes somnolency. Voltaire and Buffon were great coffee-drinkers; but I do not know that we are authorized to attribute the lucidity of the one or the harmony of the other to the habit in question. Ability would be cheaply purchased if that were the case; and the “royal road” would have been discovered where it had never been looked for.

The sleeplessness produced by coffee is not one of an unpleasant character. It is simply a painless vigilance; but, if often repeated, it may be exceedingly prejudicial. Brillat de Savarin illustrates the power of coffee by remarking, that a man may live many years who takes two bottles of wine daily; but the same quantity of strong coffee would soon make him imbecile, or drive him into a consumption.

Taken immediately after dinner, coffee aids the dyspeptic, especially to digest fat and oily aliment, which, without such stimulant, would undoubtedly create much disturbance. The Turks drink it to modify the effects of opium. Café au lait, that is, three parts milk to one of coffee, is the proper thing for breakfast; but the addition of milk to that taken after dinner is a cruelty to the stomach. A Dutchman, named Nieudorff, is said to have been the first who ventured on the experiment of mixing milk with coffee. When he had the courage to do this, the two liquids together were considered something of such an abomination as we should now consider brown sugar with oysters.

I must not omit to mention, that the favourite beverage of Voltaire, at the Café Procope, was “choca,”—a mixture of coffee (with milk) and chocolate. The Emperor Napoleon was as fond of the same mixture as he was of Chambertin; and, in truth, I do not know a draught which so perfectly soothes and revives as that of hot, well-frothed “choca.”

Substances mixed with coffee, or substitutes for the berry altogether, have been tried with various degrees of success. Roasted acorns have been made to pass for it when ground. There is more chicory than coffee consumed at the present time in France; and the infusion of the lupin does duty for it at poor hearths in Flanders; as that of roasted rye (the nearest resemblance to coffee) does in America. Experimentalists say, that an excellent substitute for coffee may be made from asparagus; and Frankfort, alarmed lest the complications of the “Eastern Question” should deprive it of the facilities for procuring the berry as heretofore, is gravely consulting as to whether asparagus coffee may be a beverage likely to be acceptable as a substitute for the much prized “demi-tasse.”

CHOCOLATE.

Ferdinand Cortez went to Mexico in search of gold; but the first discovery he made was of chocolate. The discovery was not welcomed ecclesiastically, as coffee was. This new substance was considered a sort of wicked luxury, at least for Monks, who were among the earliest to adopt it, but who were solemnly warned against its supposed peculiar effects. The moralists quite as eagerly condemned it; and in England Roger North angrily asserted, that “the use of coffee-houses seems much improved by a new invention, called ‘chocolate-houses,’ for the benefit of rooks and cullies of quality, where gambling is added to all the rest, and the summons of W—— seldom fails; as if the devil had erected a new university, and these were the colleges of its Professors, as well as his schools of discipline.” The Stuart jealousy of these localities, where free discussion was amply enjoyed, seems to have influenced the Attorney-General of James II.; for, although they may not have been frequented, he says, by “the factious gentry he so much dreaded,” he adds, “This way of passing time might have been stopped at first, before people had possessed themselves of some convenience from them of meeting for short dispatches, and passing evenings with small expenses.” Of what chiefly recommended these places, the stern official thus made a grievance.

Chocolate (or, as the Mexicans term it, chocolalt) is the popular name for the seeds of the cocoa, or, more correctly, the cacao, plant, in a prepared state, generally with sugar and cinnamon. The Mexicans improve the flavour of the inferior sorts of cacao seeds by burying them in the earth for a month, and allowing them to ferment. The nutritious quality of either cacao or chocolate is entirely owing to the oil or butter of cacao which it contains. Cacao-nibs, the best form of taking this production, are the seeds roughly crushed. When the seed is crushed between rollers, the result is flake cacao. Common cacao is the seed reduced to a paste, and pressed into cakes. The cheap kinds of chocolate are said to be largely adulterated with lard, sago, and red-lead,—a pernicious mixture for healthy stomachs; but what must it be for weak stomachs craving for food at once nutritious and easy of digestion? The “patent” chocolates of the shops are nothing more than various modes of preparing the cacao seeds.

The ladies of Mexico are so excessively fond of chocolate, that they not only take it several times during the day, but they occasionally have it brought to them in church, and during the service. A cup of good chocolate may, indeed, afford the drinker strength and patience to undergo a bad sermon. The Bishops opposed it for a time, but they at length closed their eyes to the practice. I am afraid there is no chance of the fashion being introduced into England. The advantages would be acknowledged; but then there would be a savour of Popery detected about it, that would inevitably cause its rejection. The Church herself found a boon in this exquisite supporter of strength. The Monks took it of a morning before celebrating Mass, even in Lent. The orthodox and strong-stomached raised a dreadful cry at the scandal; but Escobar metaphysically proved, that chocolate made with water did not break a fast; thus establishing the ancient maxim, “Liquidum non frangit jejunium.”

Spain welcomed the gift of chocolate made her by Mexico with as much enthusiasm as she did that of gold by Peru; the metal she soon squandered, but chocolate is still to be found in abundance in the Peninsula: it is an especial favourite with ladies and Monks, and it always appears on occasions when courtesy requires that refreshments be offered. The Spanish Monks sent presents of it to their brethren in French monasteries; and Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip II. of Spain, when she brought across the Pyrenees her hand, but not her heart, to the unenergetic Louis XIII., brought a supply of chocolate therewith; and henceforth it became an established fact. In the days of the Regency it was far more commonly consumed than coffee; for it was then taken as an agreeable aliment, while coffee was still looked upon as a somewhat strange beverage, but certainly akin to luxury. In the opinion of Linnæus it must have surpassed all other nutritious preparations, or that naturalist would hardly have conferred upon it, as he did, the proud name of Theobroma, “food for the gods!”

Invalids will do well to remember, that chocolate made with vanilla is indigestible, and injurious to the nerves. Indeed, there are few stomachs at all that can bear chocolate as a daily meal. It is a highly concentrated aliment; and all such cease to act nutritiously if taken into constant use.

We will now look into some of those famous resorts of by-gone days, where coffee and chocolate were prepared, and wit was bright and spontaneous.

THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES.

The “Grecian” appears to have been the oldest of the better-known coffee-houses, and to have lasted the longest. It was opened by Constantine, a Grecian, “living in Threadneedle-street, over against St. Christopher’s Church,” in the early part of the last half of the seventeenth century. Its career came to a close towards the middle of the nineteenth century; namely, in 1843, when the Grecian Coffee-house, then in Devereux-court, Strand, where it had existed for very many years, was converted into the “Grecian Chambers,” or lodgings for bachelors.

Constantine not only sold “the right Turkey coffee berry, or chocolate,” but gave instructions how to “prepare the said liquors gratis.” The “Grecian” was the resort rather of the learned than the dissipated. The antiquarians sat at its tables; and, despising the news of the day, discussed the events of the Trojan war, and similar lively, but remote, matters. The laborious trifling was ridiculed by the satirists; and it is clear that there were some pedants as well as philosophers there. It was a time when both sages and sciolists wore swords; and it is on record that two friendly scholars, sipping their coffee at the “Grecian,” became enemies in argument, the subject of which was the accent of a Greek word. Whatever the accent ought to have been, the quarrel was acute, and its conclusion grave. The scholars rushed into Devereux-court, drew their swords, and, as one was run through the body and killed on the spot, it is to be supposed that he was necessarily wrong. But the duel was the strangest method of settling a question in grammar that I ever heard of. Still it was rather the scholars than the rakes who patronized the “Grecian;” and there were to be found the Committee of the Royal Society, and Oxford Professors, enjoying their leisure and hot cups, after philosophical discussion and scientific lecturing; and even the Privy Council Board sometimes assembled there to take coffee after Council.

The “coffee-houses,” which were resorted to for mere conversation as well as coffee, began on a first floor; they were the seed, as it were, whence has arisen the political and exclusive “club” of the present day. The advantages of association were first experienced in coffee-houses; but at the same time was felt the annoyance caused by intrusive and unwelcome strangers. The club, with its ballot-box to settle elections of members, was the natural result.

William Urwin’s Coffee-house, known as “Will’s,” from its owner’s name, and recognised as the “Wits’,” from its company, was on the first floor of the house at the west corner of Bow-street and Russell-street, Covent Garden. In the last half of the seventeenth century, it was at the height of its good fortune and reputation. The shop beneath it was kept by a woollen-draper.

Tom Brown says that a wit was set up at a small cost; he was made by “peeping once a day in at Will’s,” and by relating “two or three second-hand sayings.” It was at Will’s that Dryden “pedagogued” without restraint, accepted flattery without a blush, and praised with happy complacency the perfection of his own works. He was the great attraction of the place, and his presence there of an evening filled the room with admiring listeners, or indiscreet adulators. Dryden had the good sense to retire early, when the tables were full, and he knew he had made a favourable impression, which the company might improve in his absence. Addison, more given to jolly fellowship, sat late with those who tarried to drink. Pepys, recording his first visit, in February, 1663-4, says that he stepped in on his way to fetch his wife, “where Dryden the poet, (I knew at Cambridge,) and all the wits of the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our College. And had I had time then, as I could at other times, it will be good coming thither; for there I perceive is very witty and pleasant discourse. But I could not tarry; and, as it was late, they were all ready to go away.”

The reign of Dryden at Will’s was not, however, without its pains. Occasionally, a daring stranger, like young Lockier, raw from the country, would object to the dicta of the despot. Thus, when Dryden praised his “Mac Flecknoe,” as the first satire “written in heroics,” the future Dean timidly suggested that the “Lutrin” and the “Secchia Rapita” were so written; and Dryden acknowledged that his corrector was right. The London beaux would have been afraid, or incapable, of setting Dryden right; they were sufficiently happy if they were but permitted to dip their fingers into the poet’s snuff-box, and, at a separate table, listen to the criticisms uttered by the graver authorities who were seated round another, at the upper end of the room. Of the disputes that there arose, “glorious John” was arbiter; for his particular use a chair was especially reserved; therein enthroned, he sat by the hearth or the balcony, according to the season, and delivered judgments which were not always final.

No man was better qualified to do so, for the “specialty” of Will’s Coffee-house was poetry. Songs, epigrams, and satires, circulated from table to table; and the wits judged plays, even Dryden’s, until the playwrights began to satirize the wits. With Dryden, “Will’s” lost some of its dignity. Late hours, card-playing, and politics; poets more didactic in their verse, and essayists more instructive in their prose, than in their daily practice; “dissipateurs” like Addison, and peers who shared in Addison’s lower tastes, without either his talent or occasional refinement,—spoiled the character of “Will’s,” where, by the way, Pope had been introduced by Sir Charles Wogan, though, years before, in his youth, he had been proud to follow old Wycherley about from coffee-house to coffee-house; and then “Button’s” attracted the better portion of the company, and left Will’s to the vulgar and the witless.

“Button’s” Coffee-house was so named from its original proprietor, who had been a servant of the Countess of Warwick, the wife of Addison. It was situated in Great Russell-street, on the south side, about two doors from Covent Garden. What Dryden had been at “Will’s,” Addison was at “Button’s.” There,—after writing during the morning at his house in St. James’s Place, where his breakfast-table was attended by such men as Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett, with some of whom he generally dined at a tavern,—he was to be found of an evening, until the supper hour called him and his companions to some other tavern, where, if not at Button’s, they made a night of it. Pope was of the company for almost a year, but left it because the late hours injured his health; and furthermore, perhaps, for the reason, that his irritable temper had rendered him unpopular, and that he had so provoked Ambrose Philips, that the latter suspended a birchen rod over Pope’s usual seat, in intimation of what the ordinary occupant would get if he ventured into it. The Buttonians were famous for the fierceness of their criticism, but it appears to have been altogether a better organized establishment than Will’s; for while the parish registers show that the landlord of the latter was fined for misdemeanour, the vestry-books of St. Paul (Covent Garden), prove that Button paid “for two places in the pew No. 18, on the south side of the north aisle, £2. 2s.;” and charity leads us to conclude that Daniel and his wife occupied the places so paid for, and were orthodox as well as loyal. The “Lion’s Head” of the “Guardian,” which was put up at Button’s, over the box destined to receive contributions for the editor, is now at Woburn, in the possession of the Duke of Bedford.

Of coffee-houses that went by the name of “Tom’s” there were three. At the one in Birchin-lane, Garrick occasionally appeared among the young merchants; and Chatterton, before despair slew even ambition, more than once dined. At the second house so called, in Devereux-court, many of the scholars, critics, and scientific men of the last century used to congregate. There Akenside essayed to rule over the tables as Dryden had done at “Will’s,” and Addison at “Button’s;” but his imperious rule was often overthrown by “flat rebellion.” The “Tom’s” was opposite “Button’s,” and stood on the north side of Great Russell-street, No. 17. It received its name from the Christian appellation of its master, Thomas West, who committed suicide in 1722. If guests gained celebrity in the latter days at “Will’s” for writing a “posie for a ring,” so at “Tom’s” Mr. Ince was held in due respect, for the reason that he had composed a solitary paper for the “Spectator.” It was a place where the tables were generally crowded from the time of Queen Anne to that of George III. Seven hundred of the nobility, foreign Ministers, gentry, and geniuses of the age, subscribed a guinea each, in 1714, for the erection of a card-room; and this fact, with the additional one that, only four years later, an enlarged room for cards and conversation was constructed, may serve to show by what sort of people, and for what particular purposes, “Tom’s” was patronized.

At the time that White’s Chocolate-house was opened at the bottom of St. James’s-street,—the close of the last century,—it was probably thought vulgar; for there was a garden attached, and it had a suburban air. At the tables in the house or garden more than one highwayman took his chocolate, or threw his main, before he quietly mounted his horse and rode slowly down Piccadilly towards Bagshot. Before the establishment was burned down, in 1733, it was famous rather for intensity of gaming than excellence of chocolate. It arose from its ashes, and settled, at the top of the street, into a fixedness of fashion that has never swerved. Gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment were the characteristics of the place. The celebrated Lord Chesterfield there “gamed, and pronounced witticisms among the boys of quality.” Steele dated all his love-news in the “Tatler” from White’s. It was stigmatized as “the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies;” and bets were laid to the effect that Sir William Burdett, one of its members, would be the first Baronet who would be hanged. The gambling went on till dawn of day; and Pelham, when Prime Minister, was not ashamed to divide his time between his official table and the picquet-table at White’s. Selwyn, like Chesterfield, enlivened the room with his wit. As a sample of the spirit of betting which prevailed, Walpole quotes “a good story made at White’s.” A man dropped down dead at the door, and was carried in; the Club immediately made bets whether he was dead or not, and, when they were going to bleed him, the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would affect the fairness of the bet!

Some of the old rules of the houses are rich in “table traits.” Thus, in 1736, every member was required to pay an extra guinea a year “towards having a good cook.” The supper was on table at ten o’clock; the bill at twelve. In 1758, it was agreed that he who transgressed the rules for balloting should pay the supper reckoning. In 1797 we find, “Dinner at 10s. 6d. per head, (malt liquor, biscuits, oranges, apples, and olives included,) to be on table at six o’clock; the bill to be brought at nine.” “That no hot suppers be provided, unless particularly ordered; and then be paid for at the rate of 8s. per head. That in one of the rooms there be laid every night (from the Queen’s to the King’s birthday) a table, with cold meat, oysters, &c. Each person partaking thereof to pay 4s., malt liquors only included.”

Colley Cibber was a member, but, as it would seem, an honorary one only, who dined with the Manager of the Club, and was tolerated afterwards by the company for the sake of his wit. Mr. Cunningham states, that at the supper given by the Club in 1814, at Burlington House, to the Allied Sovereigns, there were covers laid for 2,400 people, and that the cost was “£9,849. 2s. 6d.” “Three weeks after this, (July 6, 1814,) the Club gave a dinner to the Duke of Wellington, which cost £2,840. 10s. 9d.” The dinner given, in the month of February of the present year, to Prince George of Cambridge, was one not to welcome a victorious warrior, but to cheer an untried, about to go forth to show himself worthy of his spurs. White’s ceased to be an open Chocolate-house in 1736, from which period it has been as private an establishment as a Club can be said to be.

The politicians had their coffee-houses as well as the wits. The “Cocoa Tree,” in St. James’s-street, was the Tory house in the reign of Queen Anne. The “St. James’s” was the Whig house. It was a well-frequented house in the latter days of George II., when Gibbon recorded his surprise at seeing a score or two of the noblest and wealthiest in the land, seated in a noisy coffee-room, at little tables covered by small napkins, supping off cold meat or sandwiches, and finishing with strong punch and confused politics.

The St. James’s Coffee-house ranked Addison, Swift, Steele, and, subsequently, Goldsmith and Garrick, among its habitués. It had a more solid practical reputation than any of the other coffee-houses; for within its walls Goldsmith’s poem of “Retaliation” originated. But politics was its “staple;” and poor politicians seem to have been among its members, seeing that many of them were in arrears with their subscriptions: but these were probably the outer-room men; for the magnates, who were accustomed to sit and watch the line of Bourbon, within the steam of the great coffee-pot, were doubtless punctual in their payments ere they could have earned the privilege. And yet their poetical acumen was often more correct than their political discernment; for while the company at Button’s ascribed the “Town Eclogues” to Gay, the coffee-drinkers at St. James’s were unanimous in giving them to a lady of quality.

Of the coffee-houses of a second order, the “Bedford,” in Covent Garden, was probably the first; but, for good-fellowship, it equalled any of the more exclusive houses; for Garrick, and Quin, and Murphy, and Foote, were of the company. Wit was the serious occupation of all its members; and it never gave any of them serious trouble to produce in abundance. Quin, above all, was brilliant in the double achievements of Epicureanism and sparkling repartee. Garrick, in allusion to the sentiments often expressed here by his brother actor, wrote the epigrammatic lines, supposed to be uttered by Quin, in reference to a discussion on embalming the dead, and which will be found in a subsequent chapter, under the head of “Table Traits of the last Century.”

Æsopus, the actor, who was to Cicero what Quin was to George the Third,—he “taught the boy to speak,”—Æsopus was as great an epicure, in his way, as Quin himself. It is related of him, that one day he dined off a costly dish of birds, the whole of which, when living, had been taught either to sing or speak. Æsopus was as fond of such a dish as his fellow-comedian, Quin, was of mullet; for which, and for some other of his favourite morceaux, he used to say that a man ought to have a swallow as long as from London to Botany Bay, and palate all the way! When the fish in question was in season, his first inquiry of the servant who used to awaken him was, “Is there any mullet in the market this morning, John?” and if John replied in the negative, his master’s reported rejoinder was, “Then call me at nine to-morrow, John.”

The Bedford Coffee-house had its disadvantages, as when bullies, like Tiger Roach, endeavoured to hold sovereignty over the members. But usurpers like the Tiger were deposed as easily by the cane as by the sword; but such occurrences marred the peace of the coffee-house, nevertheless. It was, indeed, a strange company that sometimes was to be found within these houses. At Batem’s, the City House, patronized by Blackmore, the brother of Lord Southwell was to be found enacting the parasite, and existing by the aid of men who thought his wit worth paying for. Child’s Coffee-house, St. Paul’s Church-yard, was patronized by the Clergy, who assembled there, especially the younger Clergy, in gowns, cassocks, and scarfs, smoked till they were invisible, and obtained the honorary appellation of “Doctor” from the waiters. Clerical visitants were also to be found at the “Smyrna,” in Pall Mall. Swift was often there with Prior; and the politics of the day were so loudly discussed, that the chairmen and porters in waiting outside used to derive that sort of edification therefrom which is now to be had in the cheap weekly periodicals. “Garraway’s” takes us once more into the City. Garway, as the original proprietor was called, was one of the earliest sellers of tea in London; and his house was frequented by nobles who had business in the City, who attended the lotteries at his house, or who wished to partake of his tea and coffee. Foreign Bankers and Ministers patronized “Robin’s;” the buyers and sellers of Stock collected at “Jonathan’s;” and the shipping interest went, as now, to “Lloyd’s.” All these places were in full activity of business and coffee-drinking in the reign of Queen Anne. Finally, the lawyers crowded “Squire’s,” in Fulwood’s Rents; and there, it will be remembered, Sir Roger de Coverley smoked a pipe, over a dish of coffee, with the Spectator. But enough of these places, whose names are more familiar to many of us than their whereabout, but whose connexion with what may be called the table life of past times gives me warrant for the notice of them, with which, perhaps, I have only troubled the reader. I will only add, that the ceremony of serving chocolate was never such a solemnity in England as in France. In the latter country, as late as the days of Louis XVI., a “man of condition” required no less than four footmen, each with two watches in his fob, according to the fashion, to help him to take a single cup of chocolate. One bore the tray, and one the chocolate-pot, a third presented the cup, and a fourth stood in waiting with a napkin!—and all this coil to carry a morning draught to a poor wretch, whose red heels to his shoes were symbols of the rank which gave him the privilege of being helpless.

The old coffee-houses were not simply resorts for the critics, the politicians, and the fine gentlemen. Gay, writing to Congreve, in 1715, says, “Amidst clouds of tobacco, at a coffee-house, I write this letter. There is a grand revolution at Will’s. Moira has quitted for a coffee-house in the City; and Titcomb is restored, to the great joy of Cromwell, who was at a great loss for a person to converse with upon the Fathers and church history. The knowledge I gain from him is entirely in painting and poetry; and Mr. Pope owes all his skill in astronomy to him and Mr. Whiston.” Pope learnt his astronomy by the assistance of what Moore calls, “the sun of the table;” for, adding a postscript to Gay’s letter to Congreve, he says, “I sit up till two o’clock, over Burgundy and Champagne.” Ten years before, the coffee-house and London life had less charms for him. Witness the paragraph in the letter to Wycherley, in 1705, to this effect: “I have now changed the scene from town to country,—from Will’s Coffee-house to Windsor Forest. I found no other difference than this betwixt the common town wits and the downright country fools,—that the first are partly in the wrong, with a little more flourish and gaiety; and the last, neither in the right nor the wrong, but confirmed in a stupid settled medium, betwixt both.” But, ten years later than the period of Pope’s postscript to Congreve, in which he boasted of sitting over wine during the “wee short hours ayont the twal’,” as Burns calls them, we find the boaster stricken. Swift, writing to him, in 1726, remarks, “I always apprehend most for you after a great dinner; for the least transgression of yours, if it be only two bits and one sup more than your stint, is a great debauch, for which you certainly pay more than those sots who are carried drunk to bed.”

In England, the chocolate and coffee-houses were not confined to the metropolis and its rather rakish inhabitants. The Universities had their coffee-houses, as London had; and the company there, albeit alumni of the various Colleges, do not appear to have been remarkable for refinement. Dr. Ewins, at Cambridge, in the last century, acquired the ill-will both of Town and Gown for exercising a sort of censorship over their conduct. According to Cole, the Antiquary, they needed it; for he says, with especial allusion to the Undergraduates, that “they never were more licentious, riotous, and debauched. They often broke the Doctor’s windows,” he adds, “as they said he had been caught listening on their staircases and (at their) doors.” The Doctor, like his adversaries, was in the habit of visiting the Union Coffee-house, opposite St. Radigund’s (or Jesus) lane,—a fashionable rendezvous. He was there one night about Christmas, 1771, or January, 1772, “when some Fellow-Commoners, who owed him a grudge, sitting in the box near him, in order to affront him, pretended to call their dog ‘Squintum,’ and frequently repeated the name very loudly in the coffee-house; and, in their joviality, swore many oaths, and caressed their dog. Dr. Ewin, as did his father, squinted very much, as did Whitefield, the Methodist teacher, who was vulgarly called Dr. Squintum, from the blemish in his eyes. Dr. Ewin was sufficiently mortified to be so affronted in public. However, he carefully marked down the number of oaths sworn by these gentlemen, whom he made to pay severely the penalty of five shillings for each oath, which amounted to a good round sum.” The next week, ballad-singers sang, in the streets of Cambridge, a ballad, which they gave away to all who would accept a copy, and from which the following verses are extracted. They will show—if nothing else—that the University coffee-house poet was less elegant than Horace, and that the “well of English” into which he had dipped was not altogether “undefiled:”—

“Of all the blockheads in the Town,

That strut and bully up and down,

And bring complaints against the Gown,

There’s none like Dr. Squintum.

“With gimlet eyes and dapper wig,

This Justice thinks he looks so big:

A most infernal stupid gig

Is this same Dr. Squintum.

“What pedlar can forbear to grin,

Before his Worship that has been,

To think what folly lurks within

This Just Ass Dr. Squintum?”

Old René d’Anjou used to say, that, as soon as a man had breakfasted, it was his bounden duty to devote himself to the great business of the day,—think of dinner. We will in some wise follow the instructions given,—first, however, saying a word or two upon French coffee-houses, and then upon those who naturally take precedence of “dinners,”—the cooks by whom dinners are prepared.

THE FRENCH CAFÉS.

In the reign of Louis XV. there were not less than six hundred cafés in Paris. London, at the same period, could not count as many dozens. Under Louis Napoleon, the cafés have reached to the amazing number of between three and four thousand. All these establishments acknowledge the Café Procope as the founder of the dynasty, although, indeed, there were coffee-vendors in Paris before the time of the accomplished Sicilian. “Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona.”

The consumption of coffee in Paris, at the period of the breaking out of the Revolution, was something enormous. The French West-Indian Islands furnished eighty millions of pounds annually, and this was irrespective of what was derived from the East. The two sources together were not sufficient to supply the kingdom. Thence adulterations, fortunes to the adulterators, and that supremacy of chicory, which has destroyed the well-earned reputation of French coffee.

I have already spoken of the Café Procope, and here I will only add an anecdote illustrative of the scenes that sometimes occurred there, and of the national character generally in the reign of Louis XV. One afternoon that M. de Saint Foix was seated at his usual table, an officer of the King’s Body-Guard entered, sat down, and ordered “a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll,” adding, “It will serve me for a dinner!” At this Saint Foix remarked aloud, that “a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was a confoundedly poor dinner.” The officer remonstrated; Saint Foix reiterated his remark, and again and again declared, that nothing the gallant officer could say to the contrary, would convince him that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was not a confoundedly poor dinner. Thereupon a challenge was given and accepted, and the whole of the persons present adjourned as spectators of a fight, which ended by Saint Foix receiving a wound in the arm. “That is all very well,” said the wounded combatant; “but I call you to witness, gentlemen, that I am still profoundly convinced, that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner!” At this moment, the principals were arrested, and carried before the Duke de Noailles, in whose presence Saint Foix, without waiting to be questioned, said, “Monseigneur, I had not the slightest intention of offending the gallant officer, who, I doubt not, is an honourable man; but Your Excellency can never prevent my asserting, that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner.” “Why, so it is,” said the Duke. “Then I am not in the wrong,” remarked Saint Foix; “and a cup of coffee,”——at these words Magistrates, delinquents, and auditory, burst into a roar of laughter, and the antagonists became friends. It was a more bloodless issue than that which occurred to Michel Lepelletier, in later years, at the Café Février. He was seated at dinner there, when an ex-garde-du-corps, named Paris, approached him, inquired if he were the Lepelletier who had voted for the death of Louis XVI., and, receiving an affirmative reply, drew forth a dagger, and swiftly slew him on the spot.

Before Procope, the Armenian, Pascal, sold coffee at the Fair of St. Germain, at three-halfpence a cup; and the beverage was sung by the poet Thomas in terms not exactly like those with which Delille subsequently sang the virtues of the tree. The French coffee-houses at once gained the popularity to which they aspired. To Pascal succeeded Maliban, and then Gregoire opened his establishment in the Rue Mazarin, in the vicinity of players and play-goers. At the same time, there was a man in Paris, called “the lame Candiot,” who carried ready-made coffee about from door to door, and sold it for a penny per cup, sugar included. The café at the foot of the bridge of Notre-Dame was founded by Joseph; that at the foot of the bridge of St. Michel, by Etienne; and both of these are more ancient than that of Procope, who was the first, however, who made a fortune by his speculation. The Quai de l’Ecole had its establishment, (the Café Manoury,) which I believe still exists, as does the Café de la Régence, which dates from the time of the Regent Duke of Orleans, and where Rousseau used to play at chess, and appear in his Armenian costume. It was also frequented, incog., by the Emperor Joseph. The oldest café in the Palais Royal is the celebrated Café de Foy, so called from the name of its founder. Carl Vernet was one of its most constant patrons. He was there on one occasion, when some repairs were going on, and, in his impatience, he flung a wet colouring brush from him, which struck the ceiling and left a spot. He immediately ascended the ladder, and with a touch of his finger converted the stain into a swallow; and his handywork was still to be seen on the ceiling, when I was last in Paris. It was before the Café de Foy that Camille Desmoulins harangued the mob, in July, 1789, with such effect, that they took up arms, destroyed the Bastille, and inaugurated the Revolution.

The Café de Valois will long be remembered for its aristocratic character; that of Montansier, on the other hand, was remarkable for the coarseness of its frequenters, and the violence with which they discussed politics, especially at the period of the Restoration. The Café du Caveau was more joyously noisy with its gay artists and broad songs. The Empire brought two establishments into popular favour, both of which appealed to the lovers of beauty as well as of coffee. The first was the Café du Bosquet, and the second the Café des Mille Colonnes. Each was celebrated for the magnificent attractions of the presiding lady,—the belle limonadière, as she was at first called, or the dame du comptoir, as refinement chose to name her. Madame Romain, at the Mille Colonnes, had a longer reign than her rival; and the lady was altogether a more remarkable person. In the reign of Louis XVIII., her seat was composed of the throne of Jerome, King of Westphalia,—which was sold by auction on the bankruptcy of his Majesty. Madame Romain descended from it, like a weary Queen, to take refuge in a nunnery; and, curiously enough, the ex-King has recovered his “throne,” which now figures, in the reduced aspect of a simple arm-chair, in the salon of his residence at the Palais Royal. After the abdication of Madame Romain, the Mille Colonnes endeavoured to secure success by very meretricious means. Girls of a brazen quality of beauty bore through the apartments flaming bowls of punch, usually taken after the coffee; and the beverage and the bearers were equally bad.

As the Café Chrêtien was once thoroughly Jacobin, so the Café Lemblin became entirely Imperial, and was the focus of the Opposition after the return of the Bourbons. It was famous for its chocolate, as well as for its coffee. When the Allies were at Paris, it was hardly safe for the officers to enter the Café Lemblin, and many scenes of violence are described as having occurred there, and many a duel was fought with fatal effect, after a café dispute between French and foreign officers,—and all for national honour. The Bourbon officers were far more insulting in the cafés to the ex-imperial “braves,” than the latter were to the invading Captains,—and they generally paid dearly for their temerity. Finally,—for to name all the cafés in Paris, would require an encyclopædia,—it is worthy of notice that Tortoni’s, which is now a grave adjunct to the Bourse, first achieved success by the opposite process of billiard-playing. A broken-down provincial advocate, Spolar of Rennes, came to Paris with a bad character, and a capital cue; and the latter he handled so wonderfully at the Café Tortoni, that all Paris went to witness his feats. Talleyrand patronized him, backed his playing, and gained no inconsiderable sum by the cue-driving of Spolar, whose star culminated when he was appointed “Professor of Billiards to Queen Hortense,”—an appointment which sounds strange, but which was thought natural enough at the time; and, considering all things, so it was.

There is one feature in the French cafés which strikes an observer as he first contemplates it. I allude to the intensity, gravity, and extent of the domino-playing. A quartett party will spend half the evening at this mystery, with nothing to enliven it but the gentlest of conversation, and the lightest of beer, or a simple petit verre. The Government wisely thinks that a grave domino-player can be given to neither immorality nor conspiracies. But a British Government proudly scorns to tolerate such insipidities in Britons. British tradesmen, at the end of the day, may be perfectly idle, spout blasphemy, and get as drunk as they please, in any London tavern, provided they do not therewith break the peace; but, let the reprobates only remain obstinately sober, and play at dominoes, then they offend the immaculate justice of Justices, and landlords and players are liable to be fined. So, on Sabbath nights, the working-classes have thrown open to their edification the gin-palaces, which invite not in vain; but if one of these same classes should, on the same Sunday evening, knock at the religiously-closed door of a so-called free library, the secretary’s maid who answers the appeal would be pale with horror at the atrocity of the applicant. And what is the bewildered Briton to do? He looks in at church, where, if there be a few free seats, they have a look about them so as to make him understand that he is in his fustian, and that he and the miserable sinners in their fine cloth are not on an equality in the house of God; and so he turns sighingly away, and goes where the law allows him,—to the house of gin.

But, leaving the further consideration of these matters to my readers, let us now address ourselves to the sketching of a class whose most illustrious members have borne witness to their own excellency, not exactly according to the fashion spoken of by Shakspeare; namely, by putting a strange face on their own perfection.

THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART.

It is an incontestable fact, that he who lives soberly does not depend upon his cook for the pleasure which he derives from his repast. Nevertheless, the cook is one of the most important of personages; and even appetite, without him, would not be of the value that it is at present. A great artiste knows his vocation. When the cook of Louis XVIII. was reproached, by His Majesty’s Physician, with ruining the royal health by savoury juices, the dignitary of the kitchen sententiously remarked, that it was the office of the cook to supply His Majesty with pleasant dishes, and that it was the duty of the doctor to enable the King to digest them. The division of labour, and the responsibilities of office, could not have been better defined.

From old times the cook has had a proper sense of the solemn importance of his wonderful art. The Coquus Gloriosus, in a fragment of Philemon, shows us what these artists were in the very olden time. He swears by Minerva that he is delighted at his success, and that he cooked a fish so exquisitely, that it returned him admiring and grateful looks from the frying-pan! He had not covered it with grated cheese, not disguised it with sauce; but he had treated it with such daintiness and delicacy, that, even when fully cooked, it lay on the dish as fresh-looking as if it had just been taken from the lake. This result seems to have been a rarity; for, when the fish was served up at table, the delighted guests tore it from one another, and a running struggle was kept up around the board to get possession of this exquisitely prepared morceau. “And yet,” says the cook, “I had nothing better to exhibit my talent upon than a wretched river fish, nourished in mud. But, O Jupiter Saviour! if I had only had at my disposal some of the fish of Attica or Argos, or a conger from pleasant Sicyon, like those which Neptune serves to the gods in Olympus, why, the guests would have thought they had become divinities themselves. Yes,” adds the culinary boaster, “I think I may say that I have discovered the principle of immortality, and that the odour of my dishes would recall life into the nostrils of the very dead.” The resonant vaunt is not unlike that of Béchamel, who said that, with the sauce that he had invented, a man would experience nothing but delight in eating his own grandfather!

Hegesippus further illustrates the vanity of the genus coquorum of his days. In a dialogue between Syrus and his chef, the master declares that the culinary art appears to have reached its limit, and that he would fain hear something novel upon the subject. The cook’s reply admits us to an insight into ancient manners. “I am not one of those fellows,” says the personage in question, “who are content to suppose that they learn their art by wearing an apron for a couple of years. My study of the art has not been superficial: it has been the work of my life; and I have learned the use and appliances of every herb that grows—for kitchen purposes. But I especially shine in getting up funeral dinners. When the mourners have returned from the doleful ceremony, it is I who introduce them to the mitigated affliction department. While they are yet in their mourning attire, I lift the lids of my kettles, and straightway the weepers begin to laugh. They sit down with their senses so enchanted, that every guest fancies himself at a wedding. If I can only have all I require, Syrus,” adds the artist, “if my kitchen be only properly furnished, you will see renewed the scenes which used to take place on the coasts frequented by the Syrens. It will be impossible for any one to pass the door; all who scent the process will be compelled, despite themselves, to stop. There they will stand, mute, open-mouthed, and nostrils extended; nor will it be possible to make them ‘move on,’ unless the police, coming to their aid, shut out the irresistible scent by plugging their noses.”

Posidippus shows us a classical master-cook instructing his pupils. Leucon is the name of the teacher; and the first truth he impresses on his young friend is, that the most precious sauce for the purpose of a cook is impudence. “Boast away,” he says, “and never be tired of it.” For, as he logically remarks, “if there be many a Captain under whose dragon-embossed cuirass lies a poor hare, why should not we, who kill hares, pass for better than we are, like the Captains?” “A modest cook must be looked on,” he says, “as a contradiction in nature. If he be hired out to cook a dinner in another man’s house, he will only get considered in proportion to his impudence and overbearing conduct. If he be quiet and modest, he will be held as a pitiful cook.”

Alexis, another artist, takes other and higher ground. He says, that in all the arts the resulting pleasure does not depend solely on those who exercise the art; there must be others who possess the science of enjoyment. This is true; and Alexis further adds, that the guest who keeps a dinner waiting, or a master who suddenly demands it before its time, are alike enemies to the art which Alexis professes.

The earthly paradise of the early cooks was, unquestionably, among the Sybarites,—the people to whom the crumpling of a rose under the side on which they lay, gave exquisite pain. They were as self-luxurious as though the world was made for them alone, and they and the world were intended to last for ever. They would not admit into their city any persons whose professions entailed noise in the practice of them: the trunkmaker at the corner of St. Paul’s would have been flogged to death with thistle-down, if he had carried on his trade in Sybaris for an hour, and if a Sybarite could have been found with energy enough to wield the instrument of execution! The crowing of one of the proscribed race of cocks once put all the gentlemen of the city into fits; and, on another occasion, a Sybarite telling a friend how his nerves had been shaken by hearing the tools of some labouring men in another country strike against each other, at their work, the friend was so overcome, that he merely exclaimed, “Good gracious!” and fainted away.

Athenæus, borrowing, if I remember rightly, from one of the authors whose works were in that Alexandrian library, the destruction of which by the Caliph Omar, Dr. Cumming tells us in his “Finger of God,” is a circumstance at which he is rather glad than sorry,—Athenæus mentions the visit of a Sybarite to Sparta, where he was invited to one of the public dinners, at which the citizens ate very black broth, in common, out of wooden bowls. Having tasted the national diet, he feebly uttered the Sybaritic expression for “Stap my vitals!” and convulsively remarked, that “he no longer wondered why the Lacedæmonians sought death in battle, seeing that such a fate was preferable to life with such broth!”

Certainly the public repasts of the Sybarites were of another quality. The giver of such repasts was enrolled among the benefactors of their country, and the cook who had distinguished himself was invested with a golden crown, and an opera ticket; that is, free admission to those public games where hired dancers voluptuously perverted time and the human form divine.

I am afraid that all cooks in remote ages enjoyed but an indifferent reputation, and thoroughly deserved what they enjoyed. The comic Dionysius introduces one of the succulent brotherhood, impressing upon a young apprentice the propriety of stealing in houses where they were hired to cook dinners. The instruction is worthy of Professor Fagan of the Saffron-Hill University. “Whatever you can prig,” says the elder rogue, “belongs to yourself, as long as you are in the house. When you get past the porter into the street, it then becomes my property. So fake away! (Βάδιζε δεῦρ’ ἅμα,) and look out for unconnected trifles.”

And yet Athenæus asserts that nothing has so powerfully contributed to instil piety into the souls of men, as good cookery! His proof is, that when men devoured each other, they were beasts,—which is a self-evident proposition; but that when they took to cooked meats, and were particular with regard to these, why, then alone they began to live cleanly,—which is a proposition by no means so self-evident. In his opinion, a man to be supremely happy only needed the gift of Ceres to Pandora,—a good appetite, and an irreproachable indigestion. These are, doubtless, great portions of happiness; and if felicity can do without them,—which is questionable,—where they are not, comfort is absent, and a good conscience is hardly a sufficient compensation.

If Sybaris was the paradise of cooks, Lacedæmon was their purgatory. They were blamed if men grew fat on their diet, and plump children were legally condemned to get spare again upon their gruel. The Romans, again, restored the cook to his proper place in society. He might be still a slave, and so were greater men than he; but he was the confidant of his master, and there were not a few who would have exchanged their liberty for such a post and chains. And who dare affirm that the coquus was not an officer of distinction? He who knows how to prepare food for digestion and delight, is a greater man, in one particular at least, than Achilles, who could go no farther in culinary science than turning the spit; than Ulysses, who could light fires and lay cloths with the dexterity of a Frankfort waiter; or than Patroclus, who could draw wine and drink it, but who knew no more how to make a stew, than he did how to solve the logarithms of Napier.

When it is asserted that it was Cadmus, the grandfather of Bacchus, who first taught men how to eat as civilized beings should, it is thereby further intimated that good eating should be followed by good drinking.

We have heard of cooks in monasteries who made dissertations on eternal flames by the heat of their own fires: so Timachidas, of Rhodes, made patties and poetry at the same stove, and both after a fashion to please their several admirers. Artemidorus was the Dr. Johnson of his own art, and wrote a Kitchen Lexicon for the benefit of students. Sicily especially was celebrated for its literary cooks, and Mithœcus wrote a treatise on the art; while Archestratus, the Syracusan, looking into causes and effects, meditated on stomachs as well as sauces, and first showed how digestion might be taught to wait on appetite. Then theoretical laymen came in to the aid of the practical cook, and gastronomists hit upon all sorts of strange ideas to help them to renewed enjoyments. Pithyllus, for instance, invented a sheath for the tongue, in order that he might swallow the hottest viands faster than other guests, who wisely preferred rather to slowly please the palate than suddenly satisfy the stomach. It is of Pithyllus the Dainty, that it is related how, after meals, he used to clean his tongue by rubbing it with a piece of rough fish-skin; and his taking up hot viands with his hand, like that of Götz von Berlichingen, encased in a glove, is cited as proof that the Greeks used no forks. The spoons of the Romans had a pointed end, at the extremity of the handle, for the purpose of picking fish from the shell.

Then came the age when, if men had not appetites of nature’s making, they were made for them by the cooks; and the latter, in return, were crowned with flowers by the guests who had eaten largely, and had no fears of indigestion. The inventor of a new dish had a patent for its exclusive preparation for a year. But ere that time it had probably been forgotten in something more novel discovered by a Sicilian rival; for the Greeks looked on Sicily as the Parisians of the last century used to look on Languedoc,—as the only place on earth where cooks were born and bred, and were worth the paying. The artists of both countries, and of the opposite ages mentioned, were especially skilled in the preparation of materials which were made to appear the things they were not; and a seemingly grand dinner of fish, flesh, and fowl, was really fashioned out of the supplies furnished by the kitchen-garden. The Greeks, however, never descended to the bad taste of which the diarists of the last century show the French to have been guilty; namely, in having wooden joints, carved and painted, placed upon their tables for show. Artificial flowers may be tolerated, but an artificial sirloin, made of a block of deal, would be very intolerable board indeed, particularly to the hungry guests, who saw the seemingly liberal fare, but who could make very little of the deal before them.

In Sicily, the goddess of good cheer, Adephagia, had her especial altars, and thence, perhaps, the estimation in which the Sicilian cooks were held, who prayed to her for inspiration. Her ministers were paid salaries as rich as the sauces they invented. Something like £800 per annum formed the honorarium of the learned and juicy gentleman. But he was not always to be had, even at that price; and the disgusted Languedocien who would not remain in the cuisine of the Duke of Richmond, when Governor of Ireland, for the sufficient reason that there was no Opera in Dublin, had his prototype among his Sicilian predecessors. The jealousy of the culinary bondsman in Greek households against the free cook from Sicily, must have been sometimes deadly in its results.

The best-feed cook on record is the happy mortal to whom his master Antony gave a city, because he had cooked a repast which had called forth encomium from that dreadful jade, Cleopatra.

But money was the last thing thought of by the wearied epicures of Rome, especially when what they gave belonged to somebody else. When Lucullus spent £1,000 sterling on a snug dinner for three,—himself, Cæsar, and Pompey,—he doubtless spent his creditors’ money; at least, extravagant people generally do. Claudius dined often with six hundred guests, and the Roman people paid the cooks. The dinners of Vitellius cost that sacrilegious feeder upwards of £3,000 each, but the bills were discharged by a levy on the public pocket. When Tiberius ordered several thousands sterling to be bestowed on the author of a piece wherein every thing eatable was made to speak wittily, the author was really paid out of the popular pocket; and when Geta insisted on having as many courses at each repast as there were letters in the alphabet, and all the viands at each course so named that their initials should be the same as that of the course itself, he was the last person who troubled himself about the payment for such extravagance.

The cooks of such epicures must necessarily, however, have been as despotic in the kitchen as their lord was in the saloon. The slaves there, who hurried to and fro, bearing their tributes of good things from the market-place, or distributing them according to his bidding, obeyed the cook’s very nod, nay, anticipated his very wishes. They were, in fact, the ministers of an awful Sovereign. The cook was their Lord paramount. The stewards possessed no little power; but when the fires were lighted, and the dinner had to be thought of, the head cook was the kitchen Jupiter; and when he spoke, obedience, silence, and trembling followed upon his word.

From his raised platform, the Archimagirus, as he was called, could overlook all the preparations, and with his tremendous spoon of office he could break the heads of his least skilful disciples, and taste the sauces seething in the remotest saucepans. The effect must have been quite pantomimic; and to complete it, there was only wanted a crash of discordant music to accompany the rapid descent of the gigantic spoon upon the skull or ribs of an offender. The work was done in presence of the gods, and scullions blew the fires under the gaze of the Lares,—sooty divinities to whom, the legend says, inferior cooks were sometimes sacrificed in the month of December. “But,” as Othello says, “that’s a fable!”

Great Roman kitchens were as well worth seeing, and perhaps were as often inspected by the curious and privileged, as that of the Reform Club. “Order reigned” there quite as much as it did, according to Marshal Sebastiani, at Warsaw, amid the most abject slavery. Art and costliness were lavished upon the vessels, but the human beings there were exactly the things that were made the least account of.

No doubt that the triumph of the art of the cook consisted in serving up an entire pig at once roasted and boiled. The elder Disraeli has shown from Archestratus how this was done. “The animal had been bled to death by a wound under the shoulder, whence, after copious effusion, the master-cook extracted the entrails, washed them with wine, and hanged the animal by the feet. He crammed down the throat the stuffings already prepared. Then, covering the half of the pig with a paste of barley thickened with wine and oil, he put it in a small oven, or on a heated table of brass, where it was gently roasted with all due care. When the skin was browned, he boiled the other side, and then, taking away the barley paste, the pig was served up, at once boiled and roasted.” And such was the way by which the best of cooks spoiled the best of pigs.

According to Plautus, cooks alone were privileged in the old days to carry knives in their girdles. In the “Aulularia,” old Euclio says to Congrio, the cook, “Ad tres viros jam ego deferam tuum nomen,”—“I’ll go and inform against you to the Magistrates.” “Why so?” asks Congrio. “Because you carry a knife,”—“Quia cultrum habes.” “Well,” says the artist, standing on his rights, “cocum decet,” “it is the sign of my profession.” From another of the many cooks of Plautus we learn, in the “Menæchmei,” that, when a parasite was at table, his appetite was reckoned as equivalent to that of eight guests; and when Cylindrus is ordered to prepare a dinner for Menæchmus, his “lady,” and the official parasite, “Then,” says the cook, “that’s as good as ten; for your parasite does the work of eight:”—

“Jam isti sunt decem,

Nam parasitus octo hominum munus facile fungitur.”

The musicians would appear to have lived as pleasantly as the parasites. Simo remarks to Tranio, in the “Mostellaria,” that he lives on the best the cooks and vintners can procure for him,—a real fiddler’s destiny:—

“Musice hercle agitis ætatem: ita ut vos decet.

Vino et victu, piscatu probe electili,

Vitam colitis.”

Stalino complains in the “Casina,” that, clever as cooks are, they cannot put a little essence of love into all their dishes,—a sauce, he says, that would please everybody. Their reputation in Rome for stealing was much the same as that enjoyed by their Grecian brethren. The scene of the “Casina,” indeed, is in Athens; but Olympio utters a Roman sentiment when he says, that cooks use their hands as much for larceny as cookery, and that wherever they are they bring double ruin, through extravagance and robbery, upon their masters: “Ubi sunt, duplici damno dominos multant.” This is further proved by the speech of Epidicus, in the comedy so called, where that slave-cook speaks of his master’s purse as if it were game, to disembowel which, he says, he will use his professional knife:—

“Acutum cultrum habeo, senis qui exenterem

Marsupium.”

We learn something of the pay of a cook from a speech of one of the craft, in the “Pseudolus.” Ballio, seeing a single practitioner remaining in the square to be hired, asks how it is that he has not been engaged. “Eloquar,” says the cook, “here is the reason:—

“He who, now-a-days, comes here to hire cooks,

No longer seeks the best, that is, the dearest,

But some poor spoil-sauce who for nothing works.

Therefore you see me here alone to-day.

A poor drachma hath my brethren purchased;

But under a crown I cook a dish for no man.

For ’twixt the common herd and me, you see,

There is a diff’rence: they into a dish

Fling whole meadows, and the guests they treat, Sir,

As though they were but oxen out at grass.

Herbs season they with herbs, and grass with grass;

And in the mess, garlic, coriander, fennel,

Sorrel, rochet, beet-root, leeks, and greens,

All go together, with a pound of benzoin,

And mustard ditto, that compels the tears

From out the eyes of those that have to mix it.

“If men are short-lived now, the reason’s plain:

They put death into their stomachs, and so

Of indigestion and bad cookery die.

Their sauces but to think of, makes me shudder;

Yet men will eat what asses would not bend to.