The hog barbacued is a West India term of gluttony. It was a hog roasted whole, stuffed with spice and basted with Madeira wine. Allusion is made to this dish in Foote’s “Patron,” where Sir Peter Pepperpot says, “I am invited to dinner on a barbacue, and the villains have forgot my bottle of chian.”

It is plain from every line of these imitations of Pope, that the science of cookery had made great strides in the reign of Anne, nor is this to be wondered at. “La Reine Anne,” says a French author, “était très gourmande; elle ne dédaignait pas de s’entretenir avec son cuisinier, et les dispensaires Anglais contiennent beaucoup de préparations designées à la manière de la Reine Anne.” The following glimpse at the table of the poet himself has an attractive interest:

The bill of fare at this time often consisted in the month of April of the following: green geese, or veal and bacon—haunch of venison roasted—a lumber pie—rabbits and tarts. Second course: cold lamb—cold neat’s-tongue pie—salmon, lobsters, and prawns—asparagus.

But in other months the following dishes were given—brawn and mustard, hashed shoulder of mutton, broiled geese, minced pies, a loin of veal, marrow pie, venison pasty, a lambstone pie, Westphalia bacon, a Westphalia ham, artichoke pie, neat’s-tongue, and udder roasted, a roast turkey stuck with cloves, and for a second course, Bologna sausages, anchovies, mushrooms, caviare, and pickled oysters, in a dish together.

And now a word as to English cookery books. The “Queen’s Closet Opened,” published in 1662, is the first English cookery book I have been able to meet with, for the “Treasure of Hidden Secrets, or Good Huswife’s Closet,” published in 1600, is but a congeries of receipts for perfumes, essences, and candies. Some of the dishes in the “Queen’s Closet,” maintain their popularity to the present day,—as, for instance, chicken and pigeon pie, boiled rump of beef, and potted venison; but others have wholly passed away,—as, for example, a baked red deer, a capon larded with lemons, a steak pie with a French pudding in it, a fricase (we retain the spelling) of campigneons, a salet of smelts, flounders, or plaice, with garlick and mustard, an olive pie, and dressed snails.

The “Gentleman’s Companion,” published in 1673, is the earliest work of the kind met with after the “Queen’s Closet,” for “May’s Cookery,” “The Ladies’ Companion,” or even “Mrs. Glasse,” written by Dr. Hill, and which has become exceedingly scarce, I do not possess. To what a civilized and social state our gentlewomen had attained 171 years ago, will be apparent from the following extract from Mrs. Woolley.

Some choice observations for a gentlewoman’s behaviour at table. “Gentlewoman, the first thing you are to observe, is to keep your body straight in the chair, and do not lean your elbows on the table. Discover not by any ravenous gesture your angry appetite, nor fix your eyes too greedily on the meat before you, as if you would devour more that way than your throat can swallow. In carving at your own table, distribute the best pieces first, and it will appear very comely and decent to use a fork, if so, touch no piece of meat without it.

“I have been invited to dinner, where I have seen the good gentlewoman of the house sweat more in cutting up a fowl, than the cookmaid in roasting it, and when she had soundly beliquored her joints, hath smelt her knuckles, and to work with them again in the dish; at the sight whereof my belly hath been three-quarters full, before I had swallowed one bit!”—Page 65.

“Do not eat spoon-meat so hot, that the tears stand in your eyes, or that thereby you betray your intolerable greediness. Do not bite your bread, but cut or break it, and keep not your knife always in your hand, for that is as unseemly as a gentlewoman who pretended to have as little a stomach as she had a mouth, and therefore would not swallow her peas in spoonfuls, but took them one by one, and cut them in two before she would eat them.

“Fill not your mouth so full that your cheeks shall swell like a pair of Scotch bag-pipes.”—Page 71.

Many remarks are made by our countrymen and women about the filth of the French, but Englishmen should read the following, written about a century and a half ago, for the guidance of their own countrywomen.

“It is uncivil to rub your teeth in company, or to pick them at or after meals, with your knife or otherwise, for it is a thing both indecent and distasteful.”—Page 72.

The following is the advice “to the female younger sort.”

“You will show yourself too saucy by calling for sauce or any dainty thing. Avoid smacking in your eating. Forbear putting both hands to your mouth at once; nor gnaw your meat, but cut it handsomely, and eat sparingly. Let your nose and hands be always kept clean. When you have dined or supped, rise from the table, and carry your trencher or plate with you, doing your obeisance to the company.”—Pp. 19, 20.

Some insight into the cookery of 1754, maybe obtained from the pages of the “Connoisseur.” The fools of quality of that day “drove to the Star and Garter to regale on macaroni, or piddle with an ortolan at White’s or Pontac’s.” At Dolly’s and Horsman’s beef steaks were eaten with gill ale; and behind the Change, a man worth a plum used to order a twopenny mess of broth with a boiled chop in it; placing the chop between the two crusts of a halfpenny roll, he would wrap it up in his check handkerchief, and carry it away for the morrow’s dinner.

The “Art of Cookery,” by a Lady, was published by Miller, Tonson, and Strahan, in 1765. There are many good receipts in the work, and it is written in a plain style. The author sensibly says in her preface, “The great cooks have such a high way of expressing themselves, that the poor girls are at a loss to know what they mean.” This book has one great fault, it is disfigured by a strong anti-Gallican prejudice.

An attempt was made by Longman and Co. to start a sort of “English Almanach des Gourmands,” in 1815, but it was a complete failure. It was called the “Epicure’s Almanack.” Only one number was published.

The “Cook and Confectioner’s Dictionary,” which appeared in 1747, contains a vast deal of curious west country and Cornish cookery. It is a rare book, and was obligingly lent to me by Mr. Cyrus Redding, who deserves the gratitude of all for his intrepid and successful attempts to introduce a pure sherry at the English tables.

Mrs. Dalgairns’ is one of the best of cookery books for persons in the upper class of life not overburdened with wealth. It ought to be an invaluable book to the middle classes. Sir Walter Scott contributed largely to this work. The only fault with which the worthy old lady may be reproached is, that she is somewhat over national and exhibits too palpable an addiction to Scotch dishes. This is a prevailing peccadillo—if not the heinous fault of all Picts, old or young, male or female.

“Scott’s Dictionary of Cookery,” is a pretentious failure, published in 1828 by Colburn. The author was a Scotch doctor, practising at some small continental town. The work seems to have been got up with the view of rivalling Mrs. Rundell’s publication.

The “Cook’s Oracle,” by Dr. Kitchener, was first published in 1817. It had great success, but never did a book less deserve renown. Totally destitute of arrangement and originality, it is an odd confused olla podrida of receipts, observations, maxims, and remarks, drawn from all sources, ancient and modern, foreign as well as domestic. It is written in a vain-glorious, assuming style, and filled with gasconading vulgarisms and obsolete pedantry. The attempts at wit are ludicrously heavy and unsuccessful. It is a reproach to the national taste to have patronized a book of no theoretical, and of little practical worth.

The greater part of these observations also apply to that exceedingly indigested posthumous book of scraps and patches, called the “Housekeeper’s Oracle,” published in 1829.

The “French Cook,” by Ude, “officier de la bouche,” first to the Earl of Sefton, and afterwards to Crockford’s Club, has gone through many editions. It contains a disquisition on the rise and progress of cookery, which is not without merit; but the greater portion of it is taken from the “Cuisinier des Cuisiniers.” The partiality of our countrymen for melted butter in a variety of shapes is happily hit off, and is about as reasonable, in point of taste, as the antipathy of that choleric Frenchman, who exclaimed, “Je deteste ces vilains Anglais, parcequ’ils versent du beurre fondu sur leur veau rôti.”

The work of Ude is intended for the higher ranks, and for people of fortune. The book and the cook have been a little over-rated. It is neither French nor English—neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. The late Lord Sefton, who was too much of a mere glutton, would have perverted the taste of any cook, however good, who had been long in his service.

There is not a more amusing and racy volume than the “Original,” by Mr. Walker, formerly of Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards a police magistrate. Although several extracts have been already made from the book in the “Quarterly Review,” the following may be reproduced with advantage:—

“To order dinner is a matter of invention and combination. It involves novelty, simplicity, and taste; whereas, in the generality of dinners, there is no character but that of dull routine, according to the season.

“Any body can dine, but very few know how to dine, so as to ensure the greatest quantity of health and enjoyment—indeed, many people contrive to destroy their health; and as to enjoyment, I shudder when I think how often I have been doomed to only a solemn mockery of it, how often I have sat in durance stately, to go through the ceremony of a dinner, the essence of which is to be without ceremony, and how often in this land of liberty have I felt myself a slave.

“There are three kinds of dinners—solitary dinners, every day social dinners, and set dinners. All these involving the consideration of cheer, and the last two of society also. Solitary dinners, I think, ought to be avoided as much as possible, because solitude tends to produce thought, and thought tends to the suspension of the digestive powers. When, however, dining alone is necessary, the mind should be disposed to cheerfulness by a previous interval of relaxation. As contentment ought to be an accompaniment to every meal, punctuality is essential, and the diner and the dinner ought to be ready at the same time. A chief maxim in dining with comfort, is to have whatever you want when you want it. It is ruinous to have to wait just for one thing, and then another, and to have the little additions brought, when what they belong to is half or entirely finished. To avoid this, a little oversight is good, and, by way of instance, it is sound practical philosophy to have mustard upon the table before the arrival of toasted cheese. This very omission has caused as many small vexations in the world as would, by this time, make a mountain of misery. Indeed, I recommend an habitual consideration of what adjuncts will be required to the main matters; and I think an attention to this, on the part of females, might often be preventive of sour looks and cross words, and their anti-conjugal consequences. There is not only the usual adjuncts, but to those who have anything like genius for dinners, little additions will sometimes suggest themselves, which give a sort of poetry to a repast, and please the palate to the promotion of health.

“The present system of dinner giving I consider thoroughly tainted with barbarism and vulgarity, and far removed from real and refined enjoyment. As tables are now arranged, one is never at peace from an arm continually setting on or taking off a side dish, or reaching over to a wine cooler in the centre; then comes the more laborious changing of courses, with the leanings right and left, to admit a host of dishes, that are set on only to be taken off again, after being declined in succession by each of the guests, to whom they are handed round; yet this is fashion, and not to be departed from. With respect to wine, it is often offered when not wanted, and when wanted, is perhaps not to be had till long waited for. It is dreary to observe two persons, glass in hand, waiting the butler’s leisure to be able to take wine together, and then, perchance, being helped in despair to what they did not ask for; and it is still more dreary to be one of the two yourself. How different when you can put your hand upon a decanter the moment you want it! I have been speaking hitherto of attendance in its most perfect state; but then comes the greater inconvenience, and the monstrous absurdity, of the same forms with inadequate establishments. Those who are overwhelmed with an establishment, are, as it were, obliged in self-defence to devise work for their attendants, whilst those who have no such reason ape an example which, under the most appropriate circumstances, is a state of restraint and discomfort, but which, when followed merely for fashion’s sake, becomes absolutely intolerable. I remember once receiving a severe frown from a lady at the head of her table, next to whom I was sitting, because I offered to take some fish from her, to which she had helped me, instead of waiting till it could be handed me by her one servant; and she was not deficient either in good breeding or sense. It is one of the evils of the present day, that every body strives after the same dull style, so that, when comfort might be expected, it is often least to be found. State, without the machinery of state, is of all states the worst. In conclusion of this part of my subject, I will observe that I think the affluent would render themselves and their country an essential service, if they were to fall into the simple, refined style of living, discarding everything incompatible with real enjoyment, and I believe that, if the history of overgrown luxury were traced, it has always had its origin from the vulgar—rich—the very last class worthy of imitation.”

The 243rd Thousand of “Domestic Cookery, by a Lady,” has been published in the present year. This is perhaps the most popular and practical work of the kind which has ever appeared in England, but it is exclusively a middle-class book, and intended for the rich bourgeoisie. The compiler, Mrs. Rundell, had spent the early part of her life in India, and the work is enriched with many receipts of Indian cookery. It is on the whole a succinct and judicious compilation, but though well worth its price, it is yet far from being a perfect production. For many years, if report speaks truly, it has produced 1000l. a year to the publisher, and he is said to have very liberally presented the authoress with a present of 2000l.

I have not hitherto spoken of the “Cookery Book of Carème,” nor did I notice it among the French works on cookery, for two reasons: first, because Carème had been cook to George IV.; to the Marquis of Wellesley, and to the Marquis of Londonderry; and had spent a considerable portion of his life in England, or in the service of Englishmen; and, secondly, because the book has been translated by Mr. Hall, “cook to T. P. Williams, Esq., of Temple House, near Marlow, and conductor of the parliamentary dinners of Lord Canterbury.” The translation is very clumsily and sometimes incorrectly executed, but as the translator is himself a cook and a conductor of dinners! (the office seems to us new and original) it will be more convenient to take his version of the original. Mr. Hall has at least one requisite for his task, namely, admiration of his author. “I conceive (says he in his preface) I am laying before my readers the productions of a man whose abilities transcended the generality of writers in the art, whose imagination greatly enlarged the variety of entrées and entrémêts previously practised, and whose clear and perspicuous details render them facile not only to the artist who has already an advance in his profession, but also to those whose knowledge of the higher code of the kitchen has been necessarily limited.” The following are Carème’s notions on large dishes of fish, not rendered certainly into very pure and undefiled English by Mr. Hall. The sense and substance of the author are however preserved:

The following is Carème’s idea of our English turtle soup, which we will reproduce in speaking of soups:—

How well expressed is this! What parliamentary language! An able hand and a strong memory; and then the “inconsiderate” use of spices is as delicately and dexterously hinted as though Carème had taken practical lessons of the late Sir Robert Peel, or studied Hamilton’s Parliamentary Logic.

Notwithstanding the dictum of the author of the “Manuel des Amphitryons,” that “Un grand cuisinier ne doit point se livrer à la patisserie, dans laquelle il ne pourroit jamais être que mediocre,” it is in pastry and such small trifles that Carème chiefly shines. His work is unsuited to the mass of even the higher classes in this or any other country, and its use must be limited to persons of colossal fortune, who have thousands a year to expend in magnificent entertainments. The sale of such a work must, under any circumstances, be extremely limited, even though the price did not amount to the extravagant sum of twenty-one shillings.

Having now gone through the principal cookery books of England and France, I may be indulged in a few remarks on the cuisine of both countries. The cookery of England is, with the greater part of the nation, an object, not of luxurious desire or morning meditation, but of plain necessity and solid and substantial comfort.

to use the words of Milton. Men dine to satisfy hunger in England, and to sustain and strengthen themselves for those avocations, professional, parliamentary, and commercial, into which they throw more eager energy, more properly-directed vigour, force, and intensity than any other nation under the sun, not even excepting the Americans. It may be a humiliating confession, but in England no learned treatises have been written on the art of dining or dinner giving. We are wholly without “meditations” or “contemplations gastronomiques;” we do not spend thousands of pounds in the gingerbread gilding of cafés and restaurants; nor have we “magasins de comestibles,” in the style of Chevet and Corcellet. Our inventive powers are not turned in the direction of luxury, nor do we make our bill of fare our calendar, nor measure the seasons by their dainty productions. We talk little of dining or dishes, however much the most luxurious and sensual among us may think about it. We can knead and bake, and roast and boil, and stew plain food as well, perhaps better, than our livelier neighbours; but we are not so expert in petits plats, in entrées, entremets, and ragouts, and are therefore justly obnoxious to the pert remark of Voltaire, that though we have twenty-four religions, we have but one sauce. We can compare, combine and search out causes in morals, science, and legislation, but we have given no heed to the canons or combinations of cookery. We have given birth to a Bacon, a Locke, a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Watt; but we are without a Vatel, a Bechamel, a Laguipierre, a Beauvilliers, or a Carème. We have perfected railroads, steam-boats, and canals, but we cannot make a suprème de volaille in perfection, nor arrange des petits choux en profiteroles. We have produced the best quadrants, the best sextants, the best achromatic telescopes, and the best chronometers; but the truffles we grow in Derbyshire and Hampshire are pale and flavourless, and we cannot make larks au gratin. We have built the best steam-ships, the best steam-carriages, the best vehicles of every description for draught, business, pleasure, and amusement; but we cannot fatten frogs with the science of a Simon, and we do not render our mutton tender by electricity. We have beaten the nations of the earth in fabrics of linen, woollen, and cotton; but we are ignorant of epigrams of lamb, and know nothing of salpicons à la Vénetienne. We have invented the safety-lamp, the stocking-frame, and the spinning-jenny; but we hopelessly try our hands at filets de lapereaux en turban, and ignominiously fail in salmis of partridge à la bourguinote. We have excelled in everything requiring a union of enterprise, energy, perseverance, and wealth; but we have no pâtés de foies-gras of home invention, and no terrines de Nerac. We have discovered and planted colonies which will perpetuate our name, our language, our literature, and our free institutions, to the last syllable of recorded time; but we cannot make veloutés of vegetables, nor haricots blancs à la maître d’hôtel. We have given liberty to the slave, and preached the pure word of the gospel to the nations subjected to our dominion and sway; but we still eat butter badly melted with our roast veal, and we have not invented three hundred and sixty-four ways to dress eggs. Our schoolmaster has indeed been “long abroad;” but though he has so far yielded to innovation and reform as to cast off the cauliflower wig of the time of the great Busby, yet he will not hear of chouf-leurs au gratin or au jus, but will still eat his esculent boiled hard in plain water. But a truce with comparisons, which are somewhat odious. Mankind undoubtedly owe to our neighbours many ingenious culinary processes by which the productions of nature are artfully and pleasantly disguised—many delicate combinations of sauces by which the palate is alternately stimulated and palled; but though we are indebted to the French for these nick-nackeries—though we owe to them hats and hair-powder, bon-bons and busks, caps and crinolines, stays and swaddling-clothes, sabots, wigs, and waistcoats, filigrams and foulardes, gold thread, gloves, and the guillotine—yet the world is but little their debtor in any invention which does not turn on vanity, epicurism, or sensuality. They are a people who, according to their own historian, De Thou, discovered how to make tapestry before they had learned how to make broad cloth.

The metropolis of England exceeds that of France in extent and population; it commands a greater supply of all articles of consumption, and contains a greater number and variety of markets, which are better supplied. There are also some articles of meat and some articles of cookery in which England exceeds France. Though we are also undoubtedly inferior to the Gauls in the articles of veal and fowl, yet we greatly surpass them in mutton, produce better beef, lamb, and pork, and are immeasurably superior both in the quantity and quality of our fish, our venison, and our game.

This was admitted by St. Evremond nearly two hundred years ago in some stanzas, entitled “Les Avantages de l’Angleterre,” wherein he says—

In the same poem he alludes to the profuse supply of woodcocks, snipe, pheasant, and larks, and to the fine flavour and colour of the Bath mutton. It is in fish, however, that we have been always most pre-eminent.

The turbot brought to Billingsgate in large quantities from the sand-banks, on the coast of Holland and St. George’s Channel, sufficiently attest our energy and enterprise. The coast of Holland, and the sea beyond our western coast, are as open to the French as to the British, yet when has any Paris market disclosed such a supply of fish as may be seen daily at Billingsgate, even after the hundreds of thousands of retail fishmongers have been supplied. In a few soups, such as turtle, which we possess in the greatest perfection, owing to our colonial trade, and ox tail, mock turtle, giblet, hare, pea, and mutton broth, we also surpass the French—but in the making of the latter admirable broth for invalids, there is still much to desire at coffee-houses and clubs. There is scarcely known a public establishment where it may be eaten in perfection, excepting at Brooke’s in St. James’s-street. It were most desirable that we should learn how to make a French bouillon or a lait de poule, for here indeed we are ignorant and at fault. In the boiling of all plain fish we surpass our neighbours. There is nothing in Paris equal to a first-rate English turbot, cod-fish, haddock, john-dorey, or Southampton water or Severn salmon, but the sauces used for these fishes in France are infinitely preferable. It is a remark of the late Lady Holland, that no fish should be eaten with another, and, therefore, lobster sauce was excluded from her table. Dutch sauce is unquestionably more favourable to the flavour of all boiled fish.

The French certainly beat us in sturgeon cutlets, filets de sole, and béchamels of fish. The oysters of Cancale, of Etretat, of Ostend, and Marenne, are equal, if not superior, to the generality of English oysters, because they are less artificially fed, and have not their flavour washed away. But if the London tradesmen would spare their oatmeal and fresh water, the Milton native oyster would be found superior to its Gallic brother. In other shell-fish, also, we have a decided superiority. The corpulent, respectable, full-fed crab is almost unknown to the Gauls, and they have but a small quantity of lobsters and prawns, but they cultivate the smaller cray-fish in great quantities—a fish which is not common in England. Nor is there anything in French cookery equal to our barons of beef, our noble sirloins, our exquisite haunches, and saddles, and legs, and loins of Southdown mutton; our noble rounds of boiled beef, and those prime five guinea haunches of venison, which one sees from June till September, at the establishments of the Messrs. Grove, at Charing Cross and Bond Street. In cutlets of all kinds, in fricassées, in ragouts, in salmis, quenelles, purées, filets, and more especially in the dressing of vegetables, our neighbours surpass us; but we roast our game more perfectly, and can hash mutton and venison better than any one of the myriads of French cooks. In bread, cream, butter, eggs, whether with reference to size or freshness, England is not to compare with France; and a French poularde of La Bresse or du Mans is worth all the Dorking fowl hatched since the time of the deluge. Though, therefore, the French cuisine be more luxurious, more varied, more palatable, more fair and dainty to look on than our ruder, more simple, more frugal, and less luxurious kitchen, yet our aliments (with the single exception of our vegetables) are infinitely more nutritious, and to English stomachs, at least, just as easy of digestion—perhaps, indeed, easier than the more refined and recherché fare of our livelier neighbours. It were undoubtedly desirable that we should learn a little from them in the way of white and brown sauces in veloutés, in the dressing of vegetables, in the making that simple, excellent thing, an omelette, in cooking beef-steaks, veal cutlets, and mutton chops, in seasoning and flavouring with ham instead of with salt; and in a more profuse use of eggs, oil, and butter. The great objection to the more general employment of these good things hitherto has been the expense, but now that the extended operation of the tariff has rendered all kinds of provisions cheaper, a great improvement in the kitchen even of the middle classes should be expected. Within the last thirty years great improvements have been introduced into the domestic cookery of the highest nobility, and within the last twenty years, owing to frequent intercommunication, such has been the rapid progress that one may fancy oneself dining in the Rue de Bourbon, the Rue de Grenelle, or the Rue St. Florentin, instead of in Grosvenor or Belgrave-square or Park Lane; but still while anything is imperfect, something remains to be done, and with the continuation of peace, we may look forward with hopefulness, not alone to a more extended commerce, but to an improved cookery. No one desires to see Englishmen gluttons, gourmands, or refined sensualists, but only to see them adopt some few culinary improvements which would contribute to their material comfort, to their physical health, and to their mental enjoyment. “Comer à gusto y vestir al uso,” is philosophy in England as well as in Spain. Dr. Johnson declared that the subject on which a man most frequently and most earnestly thought was his dinner, and the great leviathan spoke truly in so far as he was personally concerned. “I could,” says he, “write a better book of cookery than has ever yet been written; it should be a book on philosophical principles; I would tell what is the best butcher’s meat, the proper seasons of different vegetables, and then how to roast and boil and to compound.”

Would that the doctor had lived to complete the task. The work would have been as useful as popular, and as well executed as the dictionary; and there can scarcely be a doubt that it would be comprehensive and cosmopolitan in its character, and lucid and well-arranged in its details. Such a work yet remains to be written, and the only wonder is, that it has not been long since attempted and accomplished. When it is considered that no body of men in this our country, from a parish vestry to the Imperial Parliament, can meet on any public occasion without dining together—that the Whigs dine with Lord John Russell, the Conservatives with Lord Derby, and the Radicals with any leader of theirs, if any such there be, with a good house and cellar and a good cook—it must be considered that the art of dining (“l’art de la gueule,” as Montaigne says) is one of the most important bases of representative government, and it should not be without its professors, historians, and exponents. The subject is nevertheless of a neutral character, and I have endeavoured to show the respective merits of French and English cookery. Substantial solidity and simplicity are the distinctive marks of the one; variety, delicacy, and harmonious combination is the character of the other. Both are excellent in their way, but a fusion of the two kitchens, rejecting what is coarse and barbarous in the English, and too gross, Gascon, and Provençal in the French, would be the perfection of good living. Though personally no admirer of French manners or French morals—though I put no faith in French equality, abhor French centralization, loathe from the very bottom of my heart French tyranny, and think French military glory—which is but a velvety euphemism for French brigandage and French invasion—should be put down by the comity of nations, and the strong will and strong arm of all mankind—yet I am of opinion that there is much in the French kitchen which might be advantageously transplanted and successfully imitated in this country. But as nations cling with constancy to their old culinary customs, and as systems of cookery often survive systems of polity, I am not very hopeful as to any immediate change. A new cookery book, however, pointing out the respective merits of the French and English culinary art, is a work greatly and urgently wanted. The Peel Tariff, or free trade, will never have a fair trial till such a publication sees the light.