-it is not uncommon to meet persons in private life who declare that they are wholly indifferent about what they eat or drink that they eat and drink because they are hungry and thirsty, and in order to recruit and keep up the system. We also eat and drink because we are hungry and thirsty, and in order to recruit and keep up the system; but so far from being indifferent about the matter, we hold the whole physical arrangement to be most exquisite and delicious. In corroboration of this our belief, we need only refer the reader to this and various other articles in the Magazine. Now we cheerfully admit, that there may be patients with callous appetites and hebetated tongues, who have lost the delighted sense of swallow, and are consequently such complete citizens of the world, that they know no distinction between French ragout and Welsh rabbit, Italian macaroni or Scotch rumbledethumps; but if palate and tongue be sound, then the man who says he cares nought about eating and drinking, is obviously such a monstrous and prodigious liar, that we only consider why the earth does not open its jaws and swallow him on the spot. Only look at him lunching when he fondly supposes himself in privacy-and what a gormandiser! He is a great linguist, and understands the Laplandish, as many a rein-deer would confess, of whose tongue he had made himself master. He absolutely bolts bacon like one of the North-Riding school. Now he has swallowed the Oxford sausage; and, finally, he revels in the rookery of a supposed pigeon-house. Meanwhile he has been sluicing his ivories with horn after horn of old Bell's beer-trying whether it or his last importation of London porter be preferable for forenoon imbibation. Look, and you will see the large dew-drops on his forehead-listen, and you will hear his jaw or cheek-bones clanking; and that is the black-broth Spartan who is indifferent about what he eats or drinks! An ugly customer at an ordinary! a dangerous citizen in a beleagured town! If bred to a seafaring life, the first man to propose, when put on short allowance, to begin eating the black cook and the cabin-boy!

There is another class of men, not quite such hypocrites as the above, mistaken men, who bestow upon themselves the philosophical and eulogistical appellative of Plain-Eaters. Now, strip a Plain-Eater of his name, and pray what is he? or in what does he essentially differ from his brethren of man

kind? He likes roast, and boil, and stew. So do they. He likes beef and veal, and venison and mutton, and lamb and kid, and pig and pork, and ham and tongue. So do they. He likes (does he not?) goose and turkey, and duck and howtowdy, and grouse and partridge, and snipe and woodcock. So do they. He likes salmon and cod, and sea-trout and turbot, and every other species of salt-water fish. So do they. He likes, or would like, if he tried it, A HAGGIS. So do or would they. He likes pancakes, and plum-pudding, and brandy-nans. So do they. He likes Suffolk and Cheshire cheese, Stilton and weeping Parmesan. So do they. He likes grapes and grozets, pine-apples and jargonels. So do they. He likes anchovies, and devilled legs of turkeys. So do they. He likes green and black teas of the finest quality, rather sweet than otherwise, and sugar-candied coffee, whose known transparency is enriched with a copious infusion of the cream of many Ayrshire cows, feeding upon old lea. So do they. He likes at supper the "reliquias Danaum"-that is, the relics of the dinners, presented in metamorphosis. So do they. He thinks that nuts are nuts. So do they. If the crackers are engaged, he rashly uses his teeth. So do they. He has been known to pocket the leg of a fowl. So have they. Once he has had a surfeit. So had they. Then was he very very sick. So were they. He swallowed physic. So did they. Or he threw it to the dogs. So did they. In all things the similitude, nay the identity, is complete—either he descends from his altitude-or all the world goes up-stairs to him— mankind at large devour but one dish, or he is a Plain-Eater

no more.

The truth is, that it is as impossible to define a simple taste in eating, as in writing, architecture, or sculpture. A seemingly Doric dish, when analysed, is found to be composite. We have seen a black-pudding with a Corinthian capital, eaten in truly attic style. Perhaps there exists not, except in abstraction, such a thing as a perfectly plain dish. A boiled potato seems by no means complicated. But how rarely indeed is it eaten without salt, and butter, and pepper, if not fish, flesh, and fowl! Reader! lay your hand on your heart and say, have you ever more than thrice, during the course of a long and well-spent life, eaten, bona fide per se, without admixture of baser or nobler matter, a boiled mealy or waxy?

We hear you answer in the negative. Look on any edible animal in a live state, from an ox to a frog, and you will admit, without farther argument, that he must undergo changes deep and manifold, before you can think of eating him. Madame Genlis tells us, in her amusing Memoirs, that once at a fishing party, when a young married woman, to avoid the imputation of being called a Cockney, she swallowed a live minnow. That was plain eating. Madame Genlis was excelled by the French prisoner at Plymouth who ate live cats, beginning at the whisker and ending at the tip of the tail; but we believe that at particular parts he asked for a tallow candle. Without, however, reasoning the question too high, many is the honest man who, while he has been supposing himself enacting the character of the Plain-Eater, has been masticating a mixture composed of elements brought from the four quarters of the habitable globe. That he might eat that plain ricepudding, a ship has gone down with all her crew. The black population of the interior of Africa have been captived, fettered, driven like hogs to the field, and hanged by scores, that he, before going to bed with a cold in his nose, and a nasty shivering, might take his-gruel.

We do not recollect ever to have witnessed anything approaching to plain taste in eating, except in a military man or two, who had seen severe service. One was a Major Somebody, and the other a mere Captain-but they ate up whatever might be put on their plates, without any varying expression suited to the varying viands. In fact, they relished all edible things, yet not passionately; and were never heard to discuss the character of a dish. Generally speaking, the army are neither epicures nor gluttons, when on a peace-establishment. What they may be in the field after a successful forage, we know not, nor yet after storm or sack. The clergy are formidable diners, as you may see with half an eye, from the most cursory survey of face and person. We defy you to find an exception from curate to bishop throughout our whole Episcopalian church. No doubt, there are too many small livings -yet produce the present incumbent (the late one is out of reach), and you will find him a weighty argument against all innovation in ecclesiastical affairs. Much comfortable eating has arisen out of Queen Anne's bounty. Our Presbyterian ministers are not a whit inferior to their English brethren in

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any one essential quality of the clerical character. It is now the time of the General Assembly. What shoulders, and what calves of legs! Go to the Commissioner's dinner and admire the transitory being of the products of this earth. Much good eating goes on in manses, and in the houses of the heritors. Most ministers are men of florid complexion, or a dark healthy brown, and there is only one complaint of the stomach to which they are ever subject. No member of their body ever died of an atrophy. They can digest anything digestibleand you may observe that, with a solitary exception here and there, they all uniformly die of old age. A preacher, that is, а birkie without a manse," plays a capital knife and fork, and a first-rate spoon. He seems always to be rather hungry than otherwise-gaunt, and in strong condition. Not that he or any of his cloth is a glutton. But being a good deal in the open air, and riding or walking from manse to manse, with a sermon in his pocket, the gastric juice is always in working power, and he is ready for any meal at the shortest notice. In every manse there should be a copy of Meg Dods lying beside Sir John Sinclair. Let it be lent to a neighbour, who will speedily purchase one of her own-she, too, will accommodate a friend—and thus, in a few months, there will be a copy in every respectable house in the parish. Before the arrival of Edward Irving's Millennium, in 1847, good eating in Scotland will have reached its acme-and that event will be celebrated by a Great National Festival, of which the Cookery will be transcendental. Mr Irving will preside, and we ourselves, if alive, will cheerfully accept the office of croupier. ODoherty, then a grey-headed general, will sing an ode, accompanied on the violin by Mr Tweedie of Linnhouse. Maga, for February 1847, will indeed be a splendid Number. Yes the Millennium Number will be as famous as that of the Chaldee or the Kirk of Shotts. But we are dreaming-and must be off to walk with the Commissioner.

THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT1

II. KINGS-CHAP. IV. VERSE 40.

[FEBRUARY 1820.]

[Of the work reviewed in this Essay, the Quarterly Review (No. 192, March 1855) says: "The world at large has almost forgotten Accum's celebrated work, Death in the Pot. A new generation has sprung up since it was written, and fraudulent tradesmen and manufacturers have gone on in silence, and up to this time in security, falsifying the food and picking the pockets of the people. Startling indeed as were the revelations in that remarkable book, yet it had little effect in reforming the abuses it exposed."-P. 460. These remarks, and the interest which "the adulteration of food" has recently excited, and still excites, may serve as an excuse (if any be needed) for the republication of this article. It is a slight thing in itself; but the Professor's comments are not unamusing, and the extracts from Accum are curious and interesting, the more so as they are taken from a book which is now forgotten, but which made some noise in its day. The article seems to form a suitable sequel to Meg Dods. For further and more recent information on the subject of which it treats, the scientific reader is referred to the article in the Quarterly already alluded to; to "Food and its Adulterations-composing the reports of the Analytic Sanatory Commission of the Lancet, in the years 1851 to 1854 inclusive," by Arthur Hill Hassall, M.D., London, 1855; to "Des Falsifications des Substances Alimentaires et des moyens chemiques de les reconnâitre, par Jules Garnier, et Ch. Harel, Paris ;" and to "Dictionaire des Alterations et Falsifications des Substances Alimentaires, Medicamenteuses, et Commerciales avec l'indication des moyens de les reconnâitre, par M. A. Chevallier: Paris."]

WE bless our stars that a knowledge of the art of cookery does not constitute any part of our acquirements. We are so thoroughly convinced a priori of the disgusting character of its secrets, and the impurity of its details, that we are quite sure a more intimate acquaintance with them would have

1 A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons, exhibiting the Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine, Spirituous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionary, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, Olive Oil, Pickles, and other articles employed in domestic economy. And methods of detecting them. By FREDERICK ACCUM, Operative Chemist, Lecturer on Practical Chemistry, Mineralogy, &c. &c. &c.