Besides, the fortunate gastronomer can sprinkle all this with at least his choice of thirty different kinds of wine, from Burgundy to Tokay, or Cape, and with twenty or thirty different kinds of perfumed liqueurs, without counting coffee, and other mixtures, such as punch, negus, and many more.

Of all those various things which constitute an amateur's dinner, the principal are produced in France, such as butchers' meat, fowl, and fruit; others are an imitation of England, such as beefsteak, Welsh rabbit, punch, &c. ; others come from Germany, as the sauer-kraut, Hambourg beef, chines from the Black Forest; others from Spain, as olla-podrida, garbancos, dried grapes from Malaga, spiced hams from Xeres, wines and liqueurs; others from Italy, as macaroni, parmesan, Bologna saussages, polenta, ices and liqueurs; others from Russia, as dried meats, smoked eels and caviar; others from Holland, such as cod, cheese, dried or pickled herrings, curaçao, anisette; others from Asia, as Indian rice, sago, karik, soy, wine from Schiraz, and coffee; others from Africa, as Cape wine; others again from America, as sweet potatoes, kidney potatoes, pine apples, chocolate, vanilla, sugar &c., which furnishes abundant proof of what we have elsewhere advanced, namely, that a repast, such as can now be had in Paris, is in every respect cosmopolite, where every country of the world is represented by its productions.

Why is it that Frenchmen appear to have a natural faste for cooking? "Mr. Wadd," says Tim Moore in The Irish Lion, "I was'nt reared a tailor. My grandfather was a tailor, father was a tailor, and I being the eldest son of my father, by all the rights of primogeniture was born a tailor." Is it that Frenchmen "born are cooks. See them in camp or quarters; in the workshop or the factory they are still able to turn their hands to the saucepan. Try the Star and Garter,

try the Wellington, try any of our large noted dining places, or our clubs, and we find that the more perfect the dinner, the more certainly we may write the cook down a Frenchman, or one who has acquired his science from a Frenchman.

Then what must we say to our awful steam baths, the Strand, and Fleet-street dining rooms? Simpson's for example. In we rush from the roar of the Strand. A long, dark, sweltering room is before us; no bright-eyed dame du comptoi; no shining, flashing mirrors; no waiter to glide at your nod, hot roaring guests, shouting waiters, men in cotton coats shoving about large dishes of steaming meat on rolling tables, and you eat your dinner in an atmosphere full of gin, fat, steam, and gabble.

For our own part we always leave those Strand dining rooms in a state of astonishment that Englishmen should so generally visit Paris, and yet come back and endure, without complaint, such dens as Simpson's, or Anderton's, in Fleet-street, where you are choaked by foul air, and are forced to select from a cuisine which in its incongruity reminds one of the opening lines of King's Art of Cookery:

"Ingenious Lister,* were a picture drawn

With Cynthia's farce, but with a neck like brawn;
With wings of Turkey, and with feet of calf;
Though drawn by Kneller, it would make you laugh!
Such is, good sir, the figure of a feast,

;

By some rich farmer's wife and sister drest
Which were it not for plenty and for steam,
Might be resembled to a sick man's dream,
Where all ideas huddling run so fast,
That syllabubs come first, and soups the last.
Hence, mackarel seem delightful to the eyes,
Though dress'd with incoherent gooseberries.
Crabbs, salmon, lobsters, are with fennel spread,
Who never touch'd that herb till they were dead;
Yet no man lards salt pork with orange peel,
Or garnishes his lamb with spitchcock'd eel."

Perhaps, reader, we may have, next quarter, another talk with BRILLAT-SAVARIN.

See ante, p. 471, note.

ART. IV. JOHN HOGAN.

Many a time as we sit in the stillness and security of our chimney corner, and turn over the pages of a ponderous volume of universal history, or the hot-pressed leaves of some periodic Review-a less pretentious, but perhaps even more comprehensive world-picture-we pause and ponder, straying far from the mere narrative to touch the very limits of dream-land; and suffering imagination to clothe itself in the garb and spirit, as we fancy, of some earlier time, we are filled with the greatness and glory of what is gone, and in the ecstacy of our vision cry out-"Well, it must have been a grand thing to be alive in those days!"

The marvellous culture of heathen Greece, when poetry, art, and beauty, formed the ritual of its worship, the very daily bread of its existence, and the intellect, free for once of all moral and observant restraint, could do and dare all that living intelligence might dream of; the magnificence of Roman dominion, when the first Cæsars sat enthroned in the Capitol, and the resources, the manifold tribute of all known kingdoms, flowed in the wake of victorious legions to the feet of the world's mistress; the enthusiastic passion of medieval ages, when Charlemagne defied Teutonic godsor the Hermit Peter led the wayward hordes which a new enthusiasm stirred from the ease of a growing security, and hurried out to the fabulous Last in search of adventure, renown, or the martyr's penalty and palm; the almost wild exultation which thrilled through men when a new world, a very universe as it seemed, was conquered for the nations by the faith and perseverance of one poor mariner; the Te Deums which echoed through delivered Europe when Sobieski overthrew the Moslem, and Don John of Austria won Lepanto:-the memory, in one word, of scenes and events so momentous, and so full of wonder, and their effect in the drama, as it is well called, of the world's history, so attract and enchain us, that

"Looking before and after, we sigh for what is not,' and with somewhat of a querulous outburst regret that our own days have fallen in so poor a time.

We are wrong, utterly. Imagination misleads us. If

we had lived in those desired times, even with our present boasted culture, and eager thirst for what is great, nay, with the power of appreciation we arrogate, no such fancied result of moral and intellectual exultation would have been our portion. Just as hundreds of years ago our ancestors whose fortune we so envy, being as it were" to the manner born,” accepted with equanimity enough the "course of events," and regarded as quite accountable occurrences all the pageants, which in the mid distance sweep by with so thrilling a magnificence: so would it have likewise been with us too, if somewhat closer to the foot-lights we caught a glimpse of the side scenes, and gained a too familiar acquaintance with the science of stage effect.

"The past will always win

A glory from its being far,

And merge into the perfect star

We saw not, when we moved therein."

To the thinking mind, no doubt, there is mystery and significance enough in every event, be its importance hidden or revealed at the moment; and no form of real greatness need escape the ken of the seeing eye. But oftentimes leisure, as we say, fails, or the faculty is altogether wanting for such wide and deep observance. Besides, it is an article of our own belief that after all, the hour of a country's most apparent prosperity, of what is supposed to be its highest upward progress, is not the moment when the moral life of its people has reached its climax; is not the moment when either the race is fullest of innate strength, or the individual best capable of receiving those marked influences, which result in the production of works which bear the stamp of genius, while preparing him to receive the impress of what is highest in the character of God-like human nature. Ultimate perfection, it now needs no prophet to tell us, is not to be expected in individuals or in nations; and long continuance in any circumstance of well-being is not to be counted on. And it does so happen, as if by some strange instinct, that in periods to all appearance of the greatest national success, there is a universal hurry, as if men sought to seize with avidity the good that is at hand; there is a predominant rapacity as if for immediate and unlimited possession; there is a haste in all things; and from the abundance of resources the very expansiveness of individual

power is contracted, so that men who in less affluent times might have been born to the inheritance of genius, become dwarfed, and are mere talented users of the ready appliances of advanced civilization. Any smart journeyman can design for us a goodly house, rain-proof and storm-proof, in which we can live comfortably with our family and dependents. Considerable knowledge is necessary to do so much; we question not how it has been acquired; we profit by it largely. But who shall venture to say, that there was not a quality far more akin to genius in the brain of the old Grecian, who planned and invented a way of making his little hut impervious to bad weather, and lifted the roof of it on genuine Doric pillars? A clever schoolboy can repeat problems in astronomy, and solve them too, never doubting; and can map out the orbits of stars and systems, and explain laws, and make calculations, in a manner astounding indeed if one but think of it. Yet who will sit down by the young urchin, well crammed though he be, and fancy himself in the presence of a great intelligence? Rather, if he want good company, and need communion with the highest intellect, he will go back a few centuries, and grapple with the thought of a Kepler or a Galileo, who in his day was certain of far less than our precocious schoolboy; or he will travel back over weary thousands of years, until he find himself with the Chaldean Shepherds who named the Constellations.

We hold it, therefore, a more fortunate and a better thing to stand in the dawning of a great hope, watching the growth of some vital principle; so that we feel, in every movement of the world about us, the stir of strong, fresh life, and catch, ever and anon, a glimpse of coming brightness, through the long shadows and partial obscurity of a morning slowly creeping into day. Now, all is hope and prophecy. Later, the meridian glory may overshine the world; but the next change must then be a gathering darkness. What if it really be the goodliest fate to live in such a dawning of new life? What if we but open our eyes, and find that, by kind Providence, our own lot of life is cast even in so precious a moment?

A certain benevolent individual, wishing well, no doubt, to Ireland, said, once upon a time, that the best thing that could happen would be a complete submersion of the island