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of France, as they saw the fatal tumbrel go by on its way to be filled in the Rue Vivienne, 'Alas! our money is emigrating; next year we shall go down on our knees before a fivefranc piece; we are about to fall into the condition of a ruined man; speculations of all sorts will fail; there will be no such thing as borrowing; it will be weakness, exhaustion, civil death.' The event proved the apprehension to be false; and to the great astonishment of all engaged in financematters, the payments were made with facility, credit rose, loans were eagerly caught at, and during the whole time this superpurgation lasted, the balance of exchange was in favour of France; which proves that more money came into than went out of it. What is the power that came to our assistance? Who is the divinity that affected this miracle? Gourmandise. When the Britons, Germans, Cimmerians, and Scythians broke into France, they brought with them a rare voracity and stomachs of no ordinary calibre. They did not long remain satisfied with the official cheer which a forced hospitality supplied to them; they aspired to more refined enjoyments; and in a short time the queen city was little more than an immense refectory.

"The effect lasts still; foreigners flock from every quarter of Europe, to renew during peace the pleasing habits they contracted during the war; they must come to Paris; when there, they must eat and drink without regard to price; and if our funds obtain a preference, it is owing less to the higher interest they pay, than to the instinctive confidence it is impossible to help reposing in a people amongst whom gourmands are so happy!"-vol. i. p. 239.

To give an individual illustration of the principlewhen the Russian army of invasion passed through Champagne, they took away six hundred thousand bottles from the cellars of M. Moet of Epernay; but he considered himself a gainer by the loss, his orders from the North having more than doubled since then, although most of the champagne drunk in Russia is made in the Crimea.

Be the cause what it may, the taste for French cookery is now universally diffused; nor is it confined

to the Old World, for amongst the other special missions intrusted to M. Armand de Bremont by Bolivar was that of bringing over the best cook he could get. Those who may be intrusted with similar missions would do well to consult Mercier's "Tableau de Paris," where cooks are classified by provinces. "The best," he says, "are from Picardy; those from Orleans come next; then Flanders, Burgundy, Comtois, Lorraine; the Parisian last but one, and the Norman last of all." But it is not enough to choose your cook; it is your bounden duty, and (what is more) your interest, sedulously and unceasingly to watch over his health. The orthodox doctrine on this point has been fully developed in an erudite essay, entitled "De la Santé des Cuisiniers," from the pen of no less a person than Grimaud de la Reynière, the editor of the "Almanach: "

"L'index d'un bon cuisinier doit cheminer sans cesse des casseroles à sa langue, et ce n'est qu'en dégustant ainsi à chaque minute ses ragoûts qu'il peut en déterminer l'assaisonnement d'une manière précise. Il faut donc que son palais soit d'une délicatesse extrême, et vierge en quelque sorte, pour qu'un rien le stimule et l'avertisse de ses fautes.

"Mais l'odeur continuelle des fourneaux, la nécessité de boire fréquemment et presque toujours de mauvais vin pour humecter un gosier incendié, la vapeur du charbon, les humeurs et la bile, qui, lorsqu'elles sont en mouvement, dénaturent nos facultés, tout concourt chez un cuisinier à altérer promptement les organes de la dégustation. Le palais s'encroûte en quelque sorte; il n'a plus ni ce tact, ni cette finesse, ni cette exquise sensibilité d'où dépend la susceptibilité de l'organe du goût; il finit par s'excorier, et par devenir aussi insensible que la conscience d'un vieux juge. Le seul moyen de lui rendre cette fleur qu'il a perdue, de lui faire reprendre sa souplesse, sa délicatesse, et ses forces, c'est de purger le cuisinier, telle résistance qu'il y oppose; car il en est, qui, sourds à la voix de la gloire, n'aperçoivent point la nécessité de prendre médecine lorsqu'ils ne se sentent pas malades.”

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The late Marquis of Hertford had a cook who, in his master's opinion, was inimitable in a suprême. Dining one day with an intimate friend, a distinguished privy councillor, who had frequently contested the point, his lordship declared the supréme, which he was with difficulty persuaded to taste, detestable. "Now I have you," exclaimed the Right Honourable friend; "that dish was dressed by your own chef, who is at this moment in my house." "Then all I can say," replied the Marquis, "is, that you must have spoiled his palate by drinking beer with him."

We have now arrived at the literature of the Art. The "Almanach des Gourmands" was the first serious and sustained attempt to invest gastronomy with the air of an intellectual and refined pursuit. But incomparably the completest essay on what may be termed the æsthetics of the dinner-table is the famous "Physiologie du Goût;" and a short biographical sketch of the author may not be unacceptable as an introduction to a few extracts from the work.

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Judge of the Court of Cassation, member of the Legion of Honour, and of most of the scientific and literary societies of France, was born in 1755 at Belley. He was bred up to his father's profession of the law, and was practising with some distinction as an advocate, when (in 1789) he was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly, where he joined the moderate party, and did his best to avert the ruin that ensued. At the termination of his legislative duties, he was appointed President of the Civil Tribunal of the department of l'Ain, and on the establishment of the Court of Cassation he was made a judge of it. During the Reign of Terror, he found himself amongst the proscribed, and fled for refuge to Switzerland, where he contrived to while away the time in scientific, literary, and gastronomical pursuits.

He was afterwards compelled to emigrate to America, where also his attention seems rarely to have been diverted from the study in which he was destined to immortalise himself. It is related of him, that once, on his return from a shooting expedition, in the course of which he had the good fortune to kill a wild turkey, he fell into conversation with Jefferson, who began relating some interesting anecdotes about Washington and the war, when, observing the distracted air of M. Brillat-Savarin, he stopped, and was about to go away: "My dear sir,” said our gastronomer, recovering himself by a strong effort, "I beg a thousand pardons, but I was thinking how I should dress my wild turkey."

He earned his subsistence by teaching French and music, an art in which he excelled. He returned to France in 1796, and, after filling several employments of trust under the Directory, was re-appointed to his old office of judge of the Court of Cassation, in which he continued until his death in 1826. The "Physiologie du Goût" was published some time in the year 1825, and ran rapidly through five or six editions, besides reprints in Belgium. Its great charm consists in the singular mixture of wit, humour, learning, and knowledge of the world — bons mots, anecdotes, ingenious theories, and instructive dissertations-which it presents; and if, as is currently related, Walton's "Angler" has made thousands turn fishermen, we should not be at all surprised to hear that the "Physiology of Taste" had converted a still larger portion of the reading public into gastronomers.

The book consists of a collection of aphorisms, a dialogue between the author and a friend as to the expediency of publication, a biographical notice of the friend, thirty meditations, and a concluding miscellany of adventures, inventions, and anecdotes. The meditations (a term substituted for chapters)

form the main body of the work, and relate to the following subjects:- 1. the senses; 2. the taste; 3. gastronomy, definition, origin, and use; 4. the appetite, with illustrations of its capacity; 5. alimentary substances in general; 6. specialities, including game, fish, turkeys, truffles, sugar, coffee, chocolate, &c. &c.; 7. frying, its theory; 8. thirst; 9. beverages; 10. episode on the end of the world; 11. gourmandise, its power and consequences, particularly as regards conjugal happiness; 12. gourmands, by predestination, education, profession, &c.; 13. éprouvettes gastronomiques; 14. on the pleasures of the table; 15. the halts in sporting; 16. digestion; 17. repose; 18. sleep; 19. dreams; 20. the influence of diet on repose, sleep, and dreams; 21. obesity; 22. treatment preventive or curative of obesity; 23. leanness; 24. fasts; 25. exhaustion; 26. death; 27. philosophical history of the kitchen; 28. restaurateurs; 29. classical gastronomy put in action; 30. gastronomic mythology.

Such is the menu of this book. Amongst such a collection of dainties it is difficult to select, but we quote the following reflections on the pleasures of the table, in the hope that they may help to dissipate some portion of the vulgar prejudice against gourmets, whose high vocation is too frequently associated in the minds of the unenlightened with gluttony and greediness:

"The pleasure of eating is common to us with animals; it merely supposes hunger, and that which is necessary to satisfy it. The pleasure of the table is peculiar to the human species; it supposes antecedent attention to the preparation of the repast, to the choice of place, and the assembling of the guests. The pleasure of eating requires, if not hunger, at least appetite; the pleasure of the table is most frequently independent of both.

"Some poets complained that the neck, by reason of its shortness, was opposed to the duration of the pleasure of tast

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