"They order these things better in France," and the interior economy and regulation of our taverns might, in many respects, be bettered by an imitation of our Gallic neighbours. No Parisian enters their public dining-rooms without taking off his hat, and bowing to the presiding deity of the bar. Taking his place in silence, and perusing the closely-printed folio Carte with a penetration proportioned to its bewildering diversity, he finally makes his selection, writes down the articles of his choice, and even the quantity of each, so as to prevent all mistake, upon slips of paper deposited on every table for that purpose, hands the record to an attendant, and betakes himself patiently to a newspaper until his orders appear before him in all their smoking and edible reality. There is rarely any calling of the waiter, and there are no bells to ring, the number and activity of the attendants generally rendering both processes unnecessary. If occasionally absent, the edge of a knife tapped against a wine-glass forms a fairy bell quite sufficient to summon them to their posts, although I could never divine by what auricular sympathy they recognise the chime of every table. Shortly after dinner the guests call for coffee, and betake themselves, with a valedictory bow, to their own avocations or the theatres in winter, to a promenade or a chair in some of the public gardens if it be summer. Ladies of the first respectability are habitual diners at the restaurateurs, contributing, as might be expected, to the perfect decorum of the assemblage, and even (as might not be expected) to its silence. Surely some of these coffee-house amenities might be beneficially imported, especially the temperance, in a country where wine, instead of six or eight shillings, costs exactly that number of pence per bottle. I recommend to my countrymen that this " be in their flowing cups freshly remembered."

In the manners of France one may visibly trace the effects of the Revolution, which, by depressing the upper and elevating the lower classes, has approximated and ameliorated both, rendering the former less arrogant and the latter more independent. Aristocracy of wealth and pride of purse are now pretty much confined to England; although our brethren of America are understood to be rivalling us more successfully than could have been expected from Republicans. On the Continent we render ourselves frequently ridiculous, and sometimes odious, by our arrogant conduct to inferiors; while few of our natives return to their own country without inveighing against the familiarity of foreign servants, and the insolence of the lower classes. How scandalous, how impious of the French, and Germans, and Italians, not to bow the knee to every golden calf that is worshipped in England! If instead of their stars at the India House, and thousands in the Consols, these maltreated tourists were to be measured by their real worth, they would be safe from all imputation of hauteur towards their inferiors, for they might travel over the whole world without being able to find

any.

H.

ON THE REPASTS OF THE ANCIENTS:

If the Ancients excelled us in the practice of some of the sterner virtues, it must be allowed that we have in other qualifications a most decided superiority over them. One of the most striking instances of this superiority is to be found in the immense and unwearied labours and profound researches of our savans and antiquaries: owing to whose lynx-eyed sagacity and never-to-be-repulsed perseverance, we are now more intimately acquainted with the manners of the Greeks and Romans, who flourished two thousand years ago, than they were with those of their immediate neighbours and contemporaries. If an ancient Roman were now to "revisit the glimpses of the moon," how astounded with admiration would he be, while contemplating the collection of innumerable facts that have been raked together from all antiquity; and what curious and extensive information relative to his own times might he not, for the first time, learn from the writings of modern antiquaries! I have been led into this train of reflection while wandering through the Thesaurus Antiquitatum of Gronovius. This gigantic treasure, in thirteen volumes folio, contains the researches of some hundred learned men upon the ancients. What a monument of human patience and industry! What numberless days of dry discussion, and nights of lonely watching, what burning of midnight oil and baking of healthful blood, must it not have required! What an abstract love of antiquity must not the writers who have thus devoted themselves, have had! It could not have been the love of fame, for such works are not calculated to attract the generality of readers; they are never found upon the table of the man of the world, and their gigantic folio forms would fill up the petty proportions of a modern boudoir, and oust the fair blue from her own temple. The sphere of their circulation is limited to a scanty number of secluded and studious individuals, who, far from the obstreperous clamour of the world, have little to do with either giving or taking fame. But Gronovius and his thirteen folio volumes form but a small contingent of this army of erudition. There is the collection of Grævius, nearly as bulky and voluminous there are upwards of sixty volumes published by the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, together with the numerous collections of various other academies and learned bodies. To which if we add some thousands of individual tracts and treatises by private hands, we might form a very large library, in which not one word could be found that has relation to the world for nearly the last two thousand years. But not to overwhelm my readers with this dark cloud of learning, I shall come at once to that part of Gronovius's treasure which stopped my wandering flight through this region of "chaos and old night." The subject, though an antiquated one, may not be altogether without flavour, as it relates to gastronomy, a science much relished in this age of gourmands and gourmets. It is a treatise upon the Repasts of the Ancients (de Conviviis Antiquorum) by Baccius. I am persuaded that this erudite gentleman Baccius (though I know nothing of him but from his treatise) would have played a very distinguished part at a Roman dinner; and have done so, not only as a guest, but as master of the feast, and that with no inconsiderable éclat, from his profound and classical attainments in culinary lore.

A very remarkable peculiarity in the banquets of the ancients was, their not confining the resources of the table to the gratification of one sense alone. Having exhausted their invention in the confection of stimulants for the palate, they broke new ground, and called in another sense to their aid; and by the delicate applicationof odours and richlydistilled perfumes, these refined voluptuaries aroused the fainting appetite, and added a more exquisite and ethereal enjoyment to the grosser pleasures of the board. The gratification of the sense of smelling (a sense held with us in very undeserved neglect, probably on account of its great delicacy) was a subject of no little importance to the Romans. An attention to this delicate organ they might have learned from the East, where, from the remotest antiquity, perfumes were considered as one of the indispensable enjoyments of the higher classes of society. The very nature of the climate might have led to this; for, under the influence of a burning sun, the stomach neither requires nor can support much of heavy and substantial food, nor are its demands by any means so pressing as in colder climes. It may not be altogether fanciful to suppose that in those fiery atmospheres strong and aromatic perfumes may possess some alimentary properties, and help in some measure to allay the cravings of appetite. At all events, such a supposition is not altogether out of place in the land of Peris and birds of paradise, which latter are said, according to the beautiful superstition of the country, to live upon the ethereal breath of flowers. However this may be, it is certain that the Romans considered flowers as forming a very essential article in their festal preparations; and it is the opinion of Baccius, that at their desserts the number of flowers far exceeded that of fruits. When Nero supped in his golden house, a mingled shower of flowers and odorous essences fell upon him; and one of Heliogabalus's recreations was to smother his courtiers with flowers, of whom it may be said, "They died of a rose in aromatic pain." Nor was it entirely as an object of luxury that the ancients made use of flowers; they were considered to possess sanative and medicinal qualities. According to Pliny, Athenæus, and Plutarch, certain herbs and flowers were of sovereign power to prevent the ap proaches of ebriety, and to facilitate, or, as Baccius less clearly expresses it, clarify, the functions of the brain. Amongst these disintoxicating flowers are enumerated, by the forementioned authors, the rose, the violet, the saffron flower, the myrtle, the parsley, and the ivy. I merely transcribe the names, without vouching for the virtues of these remedies. However, Plutarch has endeavoured by a long and elaborate ratiocination to shew how the exhalations of certain plants and flowers may facilitate the functions of the brain, and neutralize the usual inebriating qualities of wine. If the fact be as the worthy Cheronean has it, it may not be without its use at certain modern merry meetings. Hippocrates was also of opinion that floral exhalations are extremely salutary. I am not aware that modern experimentalists have given this subject all the attention that it deserves; and yet it is one of some importance: for if, as we are told, the brain be the seat of the soul, it behoves us to make use of every means that may render its sojourn there commodious, and keep it from the intrusion of such unwelcome visitors as vinous fumes and alcoholic vapours. If the functions of the brain are to be facilitated, and its troubles, written or unwritten, to be razed out by such gentle and agreeable agents as the delicate breath of

flowers, away then with the doleful tribes of physicians and pharmacopolists! henceforth our doctors shall be florists, and our apothecaries perfumers. Instead of nauseous draughts and stomach-revolting boluses, let us drink the delicate exhalations of a violet, or inhale the rich effluvia of the heliotrope. Let our beds be draperied with fresh-blown roses, and our rooms carpetted with living flowers. My readers cannot have forgot the frequent and honourable mention made of these fair and fragile children of the earth, in the odes of Horace and Anacreon; nor of the graceful and gallant use to which they were applied of crowning their own and their guests heads, and enwreathing their wine-cups with them. However, not to put our modern gourmands entirely out of countenance, it is but fair to state that there were amongst the Romans, those whose carnivorous appetites were far from being satisfied by the light and ethereal diet of flowery odours, and whose chief occupation seems to have been the devouring of good, or at least what they esteemed good cheer. Those who are desirous of learning the details, oftentimes disgusting, of their excessive luxury in this way, will find them in Martial, Suetonius, Juvenal, Petronius, &c. But to return to the good Baccius: in the midst of his quotations he stops to luxuriate over the recollection of an excellent repast, of which he partook at an entertainment given by the Cardinal Ascanius Colonna to the Prince of Nas→ sau, in 1577. At this feast he had the honour of tasting an olla podrida, the relish of which was still strong upon his palate. Great and almost exclusive as was his veneration for the meats of antiquity, yet he could not suppress his enthusiasm, nor prevent himself from pronouncing it a divine dish. And while in the height of his admiration, one of the illustrious guests having asked him if the ancients had ever produced any thing comparable to this olla, Baccius replied, that in truth Lucullus Vitellius and Heliogabalus had displayed the most unbounded research and extravagance in their banquets-that Juvenal and Apuleius had spoken in terms of great admiration of an olla podrida of their times-and that, in recurring to a more remote period of history, we should find it mentioned that the Athenians, when they went forth, with green branches in their hands, to meet Theseus on his return from killing the Minotaur, made an olla, by throwing promiscuously into a great boiler the various provisions they had brought with them, such as flesh and fish of different kinds, and grains and vegetables of sundry denominations-yet, notwithstanding the long-lived renown of these ancient dishes, he would not hesitate to say that it was impossible they could have equalled this unique olla of the illustrious Cardinal's. Baccius, borne away by his enthusiasm, composed an impromptu hymn à l'antique, which was actually sung whilst the guests were devouring its savoury subject. In this hymn, the Cardinal is invoked by the three Graces (quere Greases-Irish etymol.), and the Muses excite one another to laud the Spanish olla podrida of his Eminence

Longum concinat Calliope
Olle Pæan Hispanæ.

The honest antiquarian, in order to have his conscience clear, not only transcribes this hymn, but also accurately notes down the receipt for making this olla, as it was given to him, at his special request, by the Cardinal's maître d'hôtel. The ingredients are as follows-ten

pounds of beef, three pounds of sows' udders, six wood pigeons, ten quails, one pound of truffles, six thrushes, one capon, three pounds of turnips, six handfulls of green fennel seed, two pounds of sausages, one pound of pepper, six onions, twelve larks, four choice cardons (a vegetable resembling celery), two heads of Bologna cabbage, and a quantum sufficit of salt, spices, and sugar. This singular melange Baccius emphatically terms a harmonious accord, and cannot find words sufficiently expressive of his satisfaction with the Spaniards, at having thus revived and improved the hodge-podge of the ancients. I have some doubt if the laudatory judgment of the learned Baccius would be ratified by the tender-palated epicures of the nineteenth century. It is certain, that the Romans had many dishes of so singular a confection as would have frighted from their feasts some of our most determined toad-eaters. In the opinion of Apicius the most delicate dish was one composed of the tongues of flamingos. Heliogabalus felt not the fulness of the imperial dignity, unless when feasting upon the tongues of peacocks and nightingales, combs torn from the living cock, eggs and heads of thrushes and partridges, brains of flamingos, and camels' udders. At a single repast this arch glutton had served up six hundred heads of ostriches :-to furnish so extraordinary and rare a dish, the very deserts of Arabia must have been desolated. In one of Horace's satires, the triumph of Nassidienus, there is mention made of a roasted crane. For a long period of time young and tender puppy dogs were esteemed one of the greatest delicacies that could be offered to a Roman palate. Storks were also in repute, and escaped not the unsparing knife of their cooks. It is probable that the excellence of their sauces (like those of Louis XV.'s cook, which converted a pair of old slippers into a delicious ragout) compensated for the want of attraction in the viands: of this there is some proof in Pliny, who states that they had fifty different ways of dressing pig-meat. Yet, with all these appliances to boot, I am inclined to think that their most celebrated dishes would fail to captivate the tastes of our modern Apicii. Then, as to their drinking-what would a critical sipper of crusty old port, or drinker of cool claret, think of their fumed and perfumed wines, and their hot beverages, which last were forbid at length to be used, by order of the prefect, as of too enervating a quality? What a sad and heartless enjoyment was it to watch the changing colours of the fish, that were brought to table in their saucepans, and gradually boiled to death for the edification of the company! What atrocious barbarity to cause the abortion of a poor sow, by tearing away her milky udders !—an inhuman custom that was prohibited under severe penalties by Alexander Severus. Is there a gourmand, or even a glutton, of the present day, so unhumanized by sensuality, as to permit so cruel and disgusting a proceeding? We find in the writings of Macrobius, the bill of fare of a grand pontifical repast, which, with some exceptions, would not be unworthy of the first restaurateurs of Paris-of the Verys, or the Beauvilliers. But it must be recollected that this was a pontifical repast, given, as one may say, by a pagan cardinal or archbishop; and it is well known that in all countries, and under all dispensations, these reverend personages shine superior in the science of good eating. It was the worthy custom, on the accession of each new pontiff, to give a grand repast, at which the appearance of some