plied to our poor young defaulters. I visited some others in the prison the same day, and promised them if they became really good and penitent, I would be ready to give them work when the time came for their leaving the prison. Now then, I do ask all and each of the Patrons and Benefactresses of Reformatories to help St. Joseph's Industrial Institute. It is the hope of the prisoner, and the salvation of the Union orphan. Those we now have were nearly all from nine to fourteen years in the Union. There they should have died or come out to cause death or infamy to many perhaps; for we know that the sad fate offered them cannot be confined to themselves :-they are sent out to scourge those that will not help. Surely I have made my case clear?

I will not distrust your kindness by apologizing for the length of this letter. It was impossible to abridge the facts. The fate of Industrial training in Dublin is now in the hands of your readers, who will, I hope, help us. A few years of support will enable such establishments to become valuable even in the eyes of traders, and keep us at least in existence until Ragged and Industrial Schools are aided by government grants as they are in Scotland, and as I have no doubt they will soon be here. You will then hear no more from

Richmond, December, 1857.

E. W.

THE

IRISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. XXXII.-JANUARY, 1859.

ART. I.-EATING AND FEEDING-LIVING AND

EXISTING.

1. Comments on Corpulency, Lineaments of Leanness, Mems on Dietetics. By William Wadd, Esq., F.L.S., Surgeon Extraordinary to the King. London: Ebers and Co., 1829. 2. The Original. By Thomas Walker, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge, Barrister at Law; and one of the Police Magistrates of the Metropolis. Third Edition. Loudon : Renshaw, 1836.

3. The Cook's Oracle, Containing Receipts for Plain Cookery, on the Most Economical Plan, for Private Families: Containing also a Complete System of Cookery for Catholic Families. Being the Result of Actual Experiments Instituted in the Kitchen of William Kitchiner, M.D. A New Edition. Edinburgh: Cadell, 1843.

Many years ago, years when short-waisted coats, and flowerpot hats were in vogue, we read a book, then popular, upon the good things and the bad things of the table. We bought the book, and it lies before us now, with many a mark of hurried thumbing, and of rough and ready reference, about its old familiar covers and pages.

This volume consists of a short Latin poem, which is little more than a very elegant versification of a common French bill of fare, and a copious body of notes, in which the antiquities of most of the dishes commended in the text are fully and satisfactorily explained. The quantity of information conveyed in this last part of the work is really quite astonishing; and we are sure Gourmand, Gourmet, and Glutton, must be equally grateful to the author. The first note, or rather dissertation, is occupied with some sketches of the Roman luxury NO. XXXII., VOL. VIII.

of the kitchen; after which the writer passes into the following judicious remarks:

"However extravagant and foolish the whims of those rich personages of ancient Rome may appear to a sober and sensible mind, we must, in justice to their taste, cursorily observe, that their exists a material difference between a gormand and a glutton. The first seeks for peculiar delicacy and distinct flavour in the various dishes presented to the judgment and enjoyment of his discerning palate; while the other lays aside nearly all that relates to the rational plea sure of creating or stimulating an appetite by the excellent quality of the cates, and looks merely to quantity. This has his stomach in view, and tries how heavily it may be laden without endangering his health. The gormand never loses sight of the exquisite organs of taste so admirably disposed by Providence in the crimson chamber where sits the discriminating judge, the human tongue. The glutton is anathamatized in the scripture with those brutes quorum deus venter est. The other appears guilty of no other sin than of too great and too minute an attention to refinement in commensal sensuality.

"We find besides a curious shade between the French appellations gourmand and gourmet. In the idiom of that nation, so famons for indulging in the worship of Comus, the word gourmand means, as we stated above, a man who, by having accidentally been able to study the different tastes of eatables,does accordingly select the best food,and the most pleasing to his palate, His character is that of a practitioner, and answers to the appellation of an epicure in the full sense of the word, as we use it in English. The gourmet on the other hand considers the theoretical part of Gastronomy; he speculates more than he practices; and eminently prides himself in discerning the nicest degrees and most evanescent shades of goodness and perfection in the different subjects proposed to hlm. In fact, the word gourmet has long been used to designate a man who, by sipping a few drops out of the silver cup of the vintner, can instantly tell from what country the wine comes, and its age. This denomination has lately acquired a greater latitude of signification, and not improperly, since it expresses what the two other words could not mean.

"From the foregoing observations we must conclude that the glutton practices without any regard to theory; and we call him Gastrophile. The gourmand unites theory with practice, and may be denominated Gastronomer. The gourmet is merely theoretical,cares little about practising, and deserves the higher appellation of Gastrologer."

He then descends to the cook, whose history through Egypt, Greece, and Rome, down to the Palais Royal, and other celebrated eating places of modern day, is very accurately described. After listening to the high and judicious praises Le bestows on the expert practitioner of the cooking art, it is melancholy to find, that according to the authority of a certain

French author, "Cooks, half-stewed, and half-roasted

when unable to work any longer, generally retire to some unknown corner and die in forlornness and want.' But it is added most emphatically, that "Corneille, le grand Corneille, had no better fate, since be also died in obscurity and distress, a similarity which ought to contribute to their consolation." Among other curious particulars relative to the history of the cook, we find, that in the time of the first Roman emperors, his salary was very commonly about £1,000 per annum-that Mark Anthony once presented a cook with the unexpected gift of a whole corporate town, or municipium, solely because he had dressed a pudding to the satisfaction of Cleopatra— and lastly, that the French, in all things ungrateful, have derived from this profession their names for a rascallion, Coquin.

As for the dishes themselves, the soups are of course first of the first. Sorbilla, the Latin name, means nothing more than that which may be swallowed; but that which may be most easily swallowed, came not unnaturally to be always understood by it. The author's definition is complete secundum regulas. "A secretion or dissolution of the various juices contained in the muscles and fat of animals, as bullocks, calves, sheep, chickens, &c. in a menstruum of boiling water." "The soup," says a gastronomic author, "may be called the portal of the edifice of a French dinner, whether plain or sumptuous." It is indeed the sine qua non with that ingenious people. Upon it, the whole fabric of the repast reposes, as earth does on the bosom of ocean. It is the great substratum destined to support, with the association of the natural gastric acids, the whole mysterious work of digestion. Cest la soupe," says one of the best of proverbs, "qui fait le soldat. It is the soup that makes the soldier." Excellent as our troops are in the field, there cannot be a more unquestionable fact, than their immense inferiority to the French in the business of cooking. The English soldier lays his piece of ration beef at once on the coals, by which means the one and the better half is lust, and the other burnt to a cinder. Whereas six French troopers fling their messes into the same pot, and extract a delicious soup ten times more nutritious than the simple roti could ever be. It would seem, by the way, as if anciently leeks had been the principal ingredient in soups, for porridge is evidently derived from porrum. The love of the Romans for that vegetable is well known-hence Nero's nickname of the leek-eater, or Porrophagus.