a poor Lascar, belonging to the Me- nilla. She came with her whole famirope, was brought in, dreadfully bruis- ly to see me, bringing a suit of clothes ed, but not cut. belonging to one of the murdered Frenchmen, and soon after sent me a cup of warm chocolate.-At 1 A. M. I was taken from the stocks, and allowed to lie down in a more comfortable apartment; and at 8 A. M. Bennett, to my great joy, was brought back. The serjeant was still with him.

ENGLISH EATING.

-Bene qui cœnat, bene vivit-lucet-eamus
Quq ducit gula-piscemur-venemur.

PRAISED forever be thy obstinate virtue, merry old England: for, to this hour hast thou magnanimously contemned the vanities of cookery. No, the specious miracles of Italian science, the bedizening of Monsieur Very's coquinarial millinery, has no charms for thy downright simplicity of stomach. Thou hast set thine honest face against the proselytism of beef and mutton into ragouts, soups and other mysterious disguises; and wouldst hold no communion with the rash inventors of metaphysical dishes, and their disciples. Honest, unsophisticated food, such as his father throve upon, will John Bull stand up for, to his last breath. Next to the glories of roast and boiled, I prize the culinary history of my native country. The Romans, when they came over to look for pearls, found us in possession of choice beef and mutton "multus numerus pecoris," is the expression of Cæsar; and I may as well add here, the testimony of another foreigner-Voltaire, who thus historically speaks of us in the reign of Elizabeth :—

De leurs troupeaux feconds, leurs plaines

sont couvertes.

Henriade.

All that the Romans could do, could not induce our ancestors to look straight at one of their cooks. Roasting and boiling required no great clerkship to understand them. We were not very choice; but we fed copiously and satisfactorily, and cared for no man. It was no uncommon thing, in those days, for a young princess to take her turn at the spit; and a commander-in-chief was not ashamed to exchange his truncheon for a basting-ladle. Who would not envy them the natural beauties of their unpremeditated dishes? what palate would not long to snatch a taste of the rude energy of their extempore dumplings? In these primitive times,

Horace, Epist. 6. lib. 1.

Eating

two meals was the order of the day; but every man brought to the table a full-grown appetite. There was then no hypocritical earnestness in the countenance and action of a guest, to justify the praises of the viands; no fraudulent concealment of the morsel of which the world seem to have legitimately disposed. The sincerest interest in the business in hand, pervaded the industrious circle; and till repletion gave the alarm, never did hands or jaws "give o'er their functions." was then the most important concern of life. Nothing in the way of politics or morals (as has since been the case) could be effected without a feast. A treaty of peace, or adjustment of a village quarrel,-a marriage, or a campaign, was not undertaken, as in the Roman times, without a savoury sacrifice, proportioned to the occasion. Cæsar observes, that neither hares, hens, nor geese, were used at the tables of the Britons. The Druids, in excluding these articles from consumption, did no great violence to the taste of the people. Their preference was fixed upon beef; and that national dish, whose pedigree has been calumniously dated from Henry VIII.'s time, owes its birth to the free and early adoption of the Britons. After the extinction of the Druidical superstition he prejudice against poultry continue and it was in vain that the example of the Romans recommended to us the use of the cuckoo and the peacock, the latter being but recently brought under the attention of that people, at a feast given by Hortensius theforator, to the clergy of Rome. The Saxons, with a judg ment worthy of their high character, concurred in, and even improved upon the British choice. They broke through the effeminate practice of parcelling out limbs and steaks; and setting at

* Vide last No. Edinb. Review, art. Cookery. T ATHENEUM VOL. 10.

nought the dictates of an illiberal discretion, they made the table groan, not with the disjecti membra of an ox, but the mighty length and breadth of that noblest of quadrupeds," one entire and perfect." The Danes are said to have communicated to us the art of gormandizing. I do not think this assertion has been well considered; the only advantage which I can find they had over the natives was, that their bill of fare included horse flesh. The conqueror, owing to the decided and well-directed efforts of the royal purveyors, was a very corpulent man. The circumstance is authentically known to us, in consequence of its having been made the subject of an unlucky joke by the King of France. William kept his bed for some days, and was informed, that Philip had inquired if he was not yet delivered of his great belly. The angry monarch vowed that ten thousand lances, instead of the usual tapers, should attend his churching at Notre Dame; and he made good the ledge conveyed in this metaphorical

reat.

The return of the great religious festival was celebrated chiefly by feasting. Great piety, and a love of eating, were by no means incompatible things.Christmas was a period the most favourable to the indulgence of the one and the other; and it was no uncommon thing for a very devout man to die of a surfeit. Easter was not such a time for gormandizing the good folks, however, insinuated good cheer into that festival; and it was generally acknowleg that the only sure way acknowledge that he

a man ha was no J was to pay his hearty respects to a gammon of badon. We are told of a feast, at a great castle, that happened in those times, which lasted from three o'clock in the afternoon to midnight; and to the luxuries of which, six remote cities of the East contributed their choicest products. "This was a time of innovation on the simple and substantial national meal. Henry II., I am afraid, was tial to the cœna dubia, which nature a morality alike condemn.--Ie vindiced his lineage by his fondness for cranes:

during his expedition to Ireland he astonished the natives of that country, by the number and variety of his dishes,the titles of some of which only have reached us, such as karumpie, dellegrout, &c. Indeed, William of Malmesbury marks his sense of the grow ing luxury of the times, in terms of the most justifiable wrath. Richard II. was a monarch of very liberal notions upon the subject of eating: not a man less than 10,000 a-day called for meat at the kitchen of the royal household. The Earl of Lancaster distinguished himself amongst the nobles, by the most honourable profuseness. He devoted about 100,000l. a year, modern currency, to the manly expenditure of his table. Edward III. ridiculously enough, thought to lower the average of consumption, by the enactment of sumptuary laws; the first violater of them was his own son, Lionel of Clarence. The marriage of this prince was celebrated by hirty exquisite courses; and egments of the wedding feast feo ess than 1000 very hungry peo

In this reign it was that the Ea of Warwick (Neville), on of the gates fathers of eating that England has seen, rendered himself so beloved by the people, in consequence of the grand scale of his entertainments. Stow mentions that whenever he came to London, he kept such a house, that six oxe at a breakfast was considered very moderate indeed! It was usual for the great barons of those days to feast their retainers in the halls of their castles. Nor should we insult the memory of our ancestors, by supposing that their entertainments, like those of the Romans, were mere titular feasts, where a man was expect ed to eat and drink a good deal less than he spoke and listened. They did not esteem it of so much importance to inquire, with whom, as upon what, they had dined; and never made the ridi culous mistake of calling for a cata logue of guests instead of a bill of fare. Such an officer as an Anagnosten* never heard of in England. The usual two meals a day were now split into four, and the latter escaping under the

* His function is fully explained in a note to the life of Atticus in Cornelius Nepos.

was

gentle title of a livery. An unhappy love of variety (as great an enemy as disease to the ability of the stomach) then gathered force. The Archbishop of York, at his installation feast, left to his guests the range of 104 oxen, 1000 sheep, 2000 pigs, and a due proportion of other constitutional commodities. The day might have lived in our admiration, but for an unlucky appendix of 104 peacocks, and 400 swans. But, oh, the revolutions of tastes! The ordinary breakfast of an earl and his lady, we are told, in those days, consisted of bread, meat, (saltfish on days of abstinence), beer, and wine! You might offer any sum for a lady subject to the vapours, without the least risk of losing your money. The more ambitious part of the nobility permitted the introduction of fancifully-manufactured pastry at their dinners. The most venerable characters

household book, employed but two
cooks, for a retinue of 200 persons.
Fowl, which had been forbidden to
any under the class of lords, did not
form a frequent dish even at their ta-
bles; although the list of poultry, as
well as other dinner articles, was sig-
nally increased in this reign, as ap-
pears from the authority of the follow-
ing verse :—

Turkeys, carps, pickerel, and beer,
Were brought into England, all in one year.

In consequence of a temporary famine about this period, the common council of London, by a formal order, confined the Lord Mayor to seven dishes a-day, and prohibited the use of cranes and bustards, under a penalty. The English, found out the use of a variety of roots in this reign. Queen Catharine sed to send to Flanders for had for a a sallad, but now it could song in London. The histories of this in paste were sacrificed without mercy; time teem with Complaints of the luxsex or age was no pared, and one ury of the clergy. Indeed we owe it common death awae demon and to e profession to state, that they an angel. The accon of Henry have been, at all times, the most libVIII. ought to be mark in white by eral patrons of good eating. Whatall the lovers of good-eting. It was ever they might say in theory, they in his reign that the policy of suppres- certainly admixed, by their practice, sing the system of purveying began to the truth of the ancient maxim, that show itself in the gloying and pathetic a perfectly wise man should be as exsirloin, that rendered us the envy of all pert in the use of pleasures, as in the our neighbours.The fear of the pur- discharge of any of his duties: "Cui veyor, it would seem, caused the recor sapiat, ei quoque sapiat palatus:" markable neglect of ox-breeding, in the a sentiment no where m openly acearly part of our history. In a remon- knowledged than at the nns of Court. strance to Edward I. by the barons, Elizabeth, in the magnificen of her clergy, and commons of the great hard- soul, uraged the spirit of feasting. ships imposed upon them by aids, tal- She was a mortal en to fasting, as lages, and contributions of provisions, appears from the cut reambles to the necessity of supplying salt beef some of her acts.-rollinshed marks seems to go nearest to their hearts. In the rise ttoor Corrupt cookery Henry II.'s time an ox was worth but in his time, by complant, that the three sheep; before that, it was never nobility began to employ musicalvalued at more than six. The extinc-headed Frenchmen." James I. was tion of the race of purveyors allowed no great friend to the pleasures of the the greatest attention to the feeding of the ox; and consequently, in the reign of Henry VIII. the ox, on the average, was worth fifteen sheep. Families of distinction lived chiefly on salt-meat and fish during winter, with which they consumed inordinate quantities of mustard. Happily the rage for cooks had not been introduced. The Earl of Northumberland, as appears by his

table. The country gentlemen did themselves honour, meantime, by their virtuous fidelity to the traditions of their fathers; for we find a member of Pament, of that time, declaring that justice of peace, in his day, was a sort of animal, which for half a dozen chickens, would dispense with a dozen penal laws. The great national spirit of eating was asleep in the reign of

(Literary Gazette, Sept.)

VOYAGES IN THE NORTHERN PACIFIC, &c. &c.