JOHN SANDERSON, the son of a farmer in moderate circumstances, who had served in the army through the Revolution, was born near Carlisle in Pennsylvania, in 1783. There were few schools in the interior, and he had to ride between seven and eight miles every morning for three years to recite lessons to a clergyman, in the valley of the Juniata, who by teaching the ancient languages added something to a small income derived from his congregation. In 1806 he went to Philadelphia and commenced the study of the law, but at the end of two years, finding it necessary to have recourse to employments more immediately productive, he accepted the situation of assistant teacher in the Clermont Seminary, then under the charge of Mr. John T. Carré, whose daughter he subsequently married, and with whom he was many years associated as partner. In this period he was a frequent contributor to Dennie's Port Folio, and an occasional one to the Aurora newspaper. His favourite studies were the Greek, Roman and French literatures, and his chief amusement music. His violin, on which he had learned to play at a very early age, was a cherished companion to the end of his life.

In 1820 Mr. Sanderson wrote the first and second of the eight volumes of the Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, a work composed from original materials and therefore of considerable historical value, which retains its place among the popular collections of biographies. The soundness of his scholarship and his love of learning led him on several occasions to undertake the defence of classical studies, and to combat that empiricism in teaching, which has been so successfully practised in different periods in most of our cities. He put down by a pamphlet a plan which had grown into favour for a college from which Greek and Latin were to be excluded, and by a series of essays in a newspaper drove from the country one of the most notorious of those pretenders who are constantly offering in a certain number of lessons to impart a knowledge of sciences or

arts of which they themselves have learned scarcely more than the names. In 1833 he wrote the letters which appeared under the signature of Robertjeot, against the system of instruction proposed for the school founded by Stephen Girard, in which a classical culture is insisted upon with his usual earnestness and good judgment.

His health now began to fail, and he reluctantly gave up his school. He enjoyed in an eminent degree the respect and confidence of his pupils, in whom he felt a parental interest, and his success showed that the public entertained a just sense of his professional character, abilities and services.

In the hope of deriving advantage from foreign travel, he sailed for Havre on the first of June, 1835, and on the fourth of the following month arrived in Paris. His bon hommie, general information, and scholarship here made him a favourite alike with wits and men of learning; the time passed pleasantly, his health improved, and he became much attached to the city and its society, which he described to his friends at home in the series of letters afterward published under the title of The American in Paris. At the end of a year he went to London, but the Great Metropolis did not please him, and in the autumn of 1836 he returned to the United States, and soon after resumed the occupation of a teacher in the Philadelphia High School, in which he was appointed Professor of the Greek and Latin languages.

In 1839 he gave to the public The American in Paris, in two volumes, which were soon after, on the recommendation of Mr. Theodore Hook, republished in London, and in 1843 in Paris, in a French version by Jules Janin, from which a retranslation appeared in the same year in London and New York. He also commenced the preparation of a work to be called The American in London, parts of which were printed in the Knickerbocker Magazine, for which, and the Lady's Book, he wrote from time to time various sketches of travel and descriptive and humorous essays.

I became acquainted with him in 1841, and few except the members of his own family saw more of him during the remainder of his life. For some time he resided in a house nearly opposite to mine, and frequently in the pleasant mornings and evenings we walked together, or if the weather was unpropitious, discussed the merits of men, books and opinions, by the fireside. His hair as white with age, but his eyes reflected his heart, and had the glow of youth. Though he continued to be a sufferer from ill Kealth, he lost none of his amiable cheerfulness, or warm sympathy with all about him. His manners were quiet❘ and simple, his conversation various, and enriched with learning and wide observation, and his trenchant wit and sportive humour unfailing sources of delight to all who could appreciate their keenness and delicacy. No one could fail to perceive that while he was sensitively alive to the ludicrous, and sketched follies quaintly, forcibly and effectively, the kindness of nature, which gave a tone to his familiar intercourse with the world, prevented his ever summoning a shadow to any face or permitting a weight to lie on any heart. Indeed an incident connected with our first meeting so well illustrates his social character that it will serve better than any thing else I can write to make the reader acquainted with him. For some reason I retired at an early hour from a party given by a common friend, at which he was present and had satirized with a freedom unusual to him a person in public life with whom, he heard in the course of the evening, I was personally intimate. His gayety was at an end, and after the middle of the night, while a storm was raging, he called to express his regrets; he "could not sleep with any such annoying recollection." His observations had been so good natured and ingenius that even the subject of them could not have been offended, and it happened afterward that he and Sanderson regarded each other with great respect and kindness.

No man was ever more fond of his children. He was particularly attached to a daughter, who superintended his house; for his wife, whose memory he fondly cherished, was dead, and he should "sleep well beside her!"-he rose suddenly, with averted face, from my table, one day, as he said these words, and soon, from the window by the street, I saw him en

tering his own door. I understood that silent language, and when we met again, a few hours after, it was felt that no explanation was needed. The last time I saw him we took tea together at the house of an eminent lawyer, and it has been often mentioned since, that on that occasion he playfully exacted from me, and made our host and his family witnesses of it, a promise to be the recorder of his virtues after his death. I am able to fulfil the readily given pledge but imperfectly. I can only hope to renew in the minds of some who knew him the remembrance of his admirable qualities. He died very suddenly in the following week, on the fifth of April, 1844, in consequence of a slight cold which I believe he received that very night.

In the beginning of his book on Paris, on which principally rests his reputation as a writer, he says that he will be a Boswell to that city. The work is certainly unsurpassed in its way, a very mirror of that home of the gay, the brilliant and profound, of all in life or art that attracts the man of genius, learning, or taste. It displays excellent humour, accuracy of observation, and skill in character writing; and occasionally a compass of knowledge, a judicious philanthropy, and a soundness of judgment, for which those who had little knowledge of him would not have been likely to give him credit. His essays, entitled The French and English Kitchen, and miscellaneous magazine papers, are not less admirable in their way; and the anonymous satires, in which at an earlier period he assailed popular absurdities and abuses, show how well he could have kept fools and knaves in a restraining terror, had not his good nature, and delicate taste and perception, led him to the study of the beautiful.

"When hearts, whose truth was proven,
Like thine, are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth.

"And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and wo were thine,-
"It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow;
But I've in vain essay'd it.
And feel I cannot now."

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*Lines on the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake, by Halleck.

TAGLIONI.

FROM THE AMERICAN IN PARIS,

THERE was a flutter through the house, the music announcing some great event, and at length amidst a burst of acclamations, Mademoiselle Taglioni stood upon the margin of the scene. She seemed to have alighted there from some other sphere.

I expected to be little pleased with this lady, I had heard such frequent praises of her accomplishments, but was disappointed. Her exceeding beauty surpasses the most excessive eulogy. Her dance is the whole rhetoric of pantomime; its movements, pauses and attitudes in their purest Attic simplicity, chastity and urbanity. She has a power over the feelings which you will be unwilling to concede to her art. She will make your heart beat with joy: she will make you weep by the sole eloquence of her limbs. What inimitable grace! In all she attempts you will love her, and best in that which she attempts last. If she stands still, you will wish her a statue that she may stand still always; or if she moves, you will wish her a wave of the sea that she may do nothing but that "move still, still so, and own no other function." To me she appeared last night to have filled up entirely the illusion of the play-to have shuffled off this gross and clumsy humanity, and to belong to some more airy and spiritual world. But my companion, who is a professor, and a little ecclesiastical, and bred in that most undancing country, New England, was scandalized at the whole performance. He is of the old school, and has ancient notions of the stage, and does not approve this modern way of "holding the mirror up to nature." He was displeased especially at the scantiness of the lady's wardrobe. I was born farther south and could better bear it.

The art of dressing has been carried often by the ladies to a blamable excess of quantity; so much so, that a great wit said in his day, woman was "the least part of herself." Taglioni's sins, it is true, do not lie on this side of the category; she produced last evening nothing but herself Mademoiselle Taglioni in the abstract. Ovid would not have complained of her. Her lower limbs wore a light silk, imitating nature with undistinguishable nicety, and her bosom a thin gauze which just relieved the eye, as you have seen a fine fleecy cloud hang upon the dazzling sun. there is no gentleman out of New England who would not have grieved to see her spoilt by villanous mantuamakers. She did not, moreover, exceed what the courtesy of nations has permitted, and what is necessary to the proper exhibition of her art....

But

Dancing, you know, is a characteristic amusement of the French, and you may suppose they have accommodations to gratify their taste to its fullest extent. There are elegant rotundas for dancing in nearly all the public gardens, as at "Tivoli," "Waxhal d' Eté," and the "Chaumière de Mont Parnasse." Besides there are "Guinguettes" at every Barrière; and in the "Village Fetes," which endure the whole summer, dancing is the chief amusement; and public ball-rooms are

distributed through every quarter of Paris, suited to every one's rank and fortune. The best society of Paris go to the balls of Ranelah, Auteuil and St. Cloud. The theatres, too, are converted into ball-rooms, especially for the masquerades, from the beginning to the end of the Carnival.

I hired a cabriolet and driver the other night, and went with a lady from New Orleans, to sce the most famous of the "Guinguettes." Here all the little world seemed to me completely and reasonably happy; behaving with all the decency, and dancing with almost the grace of high life. We visited half a dozen, paying only ten sous at each for admission. I must not tell you it was Sunday night; it is so difficult to keep Sunday all alone, and without any one to help you; the clergy find a great deal of trouble to keep it themselves here, there is so little encouragement. On Sunday only these places are seen to advantage. I am very far from approving of dancing on this day, if one can help it; but I have no doubt that in a city like Paris, the dancers are more taken from the tavern and gin shops than from the churches. I do not approve, either, of the absolute denunciation this elegant amusement incurs from many of our religious classes in America. If human virtues are put up at too high a price no one will bid for them. Not a word is said against dancing in the Old or New Testament, and a great deal in favour. Miriam danced, you know how prettily; and David danced "before the Lord with all his might;" to be sure the manner of his dancing was not quite so commendable according to the fashion of our climates. If you will accept classical authority I will give you pedantry pardessus la tête. The Greeks ascribed to dancing a celestial origin, and they admitted it even amongst the accomplishments and amusements of their divinities. The Graces are represented almost always in the attitude of dancing; and Apollo, the most amiable of the gods, and the god of wisdom too, is called by Pindar the "dancer." Indeed, I could show you, if I pleased, that Jupiter himself sometimes took part in a cotillon, and on one occasion danced a gavot.

Μεςοισιν δ' ώρχει το πατηρ ανδρωντε θεώντε, There it is proved to you from an ancient Greek poet. I could show you, too, that Epaminondas, amongst his rare qualities, is praised by Cornelius Nepos for his skill in dancing; and that Themistocles, in an evening party at Athens, passed for a clown for refusing to take a share in a dance. But it is so foppish to quote Greek and to be talking to women about the ancients. Don't say that dancing is not a natural inclination, or I will set all the savages on you of the Rocky Mountains; and I don't know how many of the dumb animals

especially the bears, who, even on the South Sea Islands, where they could not have any relations with the Académie Royale de Musique, always express their extreme joy, Captain Cook says, by this agreeable agitation of limbs. And you won't believe all this, I will take you to see a Negro holiday on the Mississippi.

if

DINING IN PARIS.

FROM THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH KITCHEN.

THE English are before all nations in bull-dogs; perhaps also in morals; but for the art of dressing themselves and their dinners the first honours are due by general acknowledgement to the French. The French are therefore entitled to our first and most serious consideration.

The Revolution having broken up the French clerical nobility, cookery was brought out from the cloisters, and made to breathe the free and ventilated air of common life, and talents no longer engrossed by the few were forced into the service of the community. A taste was spread abroad, and a proper sense of gastronomy impressed upon the public mind. Eating-houses, or restaurans and cafés, multiplied, and skill was brought out by competition to the highest degree of cultivation and development. The number of such houses now in Paris alone, exceeds six thousand. But the shortest way to give value to a profession is to bestow honour and reward upon those who administer its duties, and to this policy, nowhere so well understood as in Paris, the French kitchen chiefly owes its celebrity. I begin therefore with a brief notice of some of its most distinguished artists.

I must premise, however, that in fine arts gene. rally, and eating in particular, America lags behind the civilization of Europe, a deficiency the more to be deplored that ingenious foreigners who visit us do not fail to infer from it a low state of morals and intellect. How, indeed, entertain a favourable opinion of a nation which gives us bad dinners! I must observe, too, that women are the natural pioneers in this and other matters of taste, and that their special province is to take care their country be not justly at least subjected to these injurious imputations. Men, it is true, are accounted the best cooks, and the kitchen, like the grammar, prefers the masculine to the feminine gender; but this argues no incapacity in the sex, as I shall show hereafter, but a mere physical inferiority. The best culinary critics and natural legislators in this department are indisputably women. And farther, it is scarcely possible to impress the world with an idea of one's gentility without a studied knowledge of this science, its very language having become a part of the vocabulary of polite conversation. All over Europe it is ranked with the liberal sciences, and has its apparatus, its technology like the rest. Indeed, a very sensible French writer, president of the court of Cassation, has declared gastronomy to be of greater use and dignity than astronomy;"for," says he, "we have stars enough, and we can never have enough of dishes." Nor is it to be looked at as a mere accomplishment to him or her who visits Paris, but a dire necessity. How often, alas, have I seen a poor countryman seated in despair at a French table, scratching his head over its crabbed catalogue of hard names, as a wrecked voyager who looks from his plank upon the desolate sea for some signs of safety-upon its fifty soups, its consommé ; puré a la julienne; its casserole, grenouilles, poulets en blanquettes, &c. Nothing can he see, for the life

of him, in all this, but castor oil, green owls, and chickens in blankets.

Some writers do indeed pretend that republicanism is of a gross nature, and opposed to any high degree of polish in this and the other arts. But it is sheer assertion without a shadow of evidence. Surely, the Roman who dined at Lucullus's, with Tully and Pompeius Magnus, in the "Hall of Apollo;" and surely the Athenian, who passed his morning at an oration of Pericles in the senate, who strolled after dinner with Phidias to the Pantheon, who went to the new piece of Sophocles at night, and to complete his day supped with Aspasia, was not greatly to be pitied or contemned by the most flagrant gourmands of Crockford's or Tortoni's. These are but foreign and monarchical prejudices, which will wear away under the slow but sure influence of time and the ladies. if I am not greatly mistaken, there is a revolution in eating silently going on in this country at this very time. Many persons in our large cities begin already to show taste in culinary inquiries, and a proper appreciation of the dignity of the subject; and, in some instances, a degree of the enthusiasm which always accompanies and intimates genius, and which leaves the question about capacity for the higher attainments indisputable. I know a lady of this city-a Quaker lady-who never speaks of terrapins without placing her hand upon her heart. I shall now proceed, without any apology for selecting the "Lady's Book" as a proper medium, to offer some remarks upon this interesting subject.

Indeed,

He

The classical school has at its head the name of Beauvilliers, of the Rue Richelieu, No. 20. was in great vogue at the end of the imperial government, and in 1814-15, shared with Very the favour of our friends the enemy," as he used to call the allies. He left a standard work, in one vol. 8vo, on the Art de Cuisine, and closed his illustrious career the same year as Napoleon, and his monument rivals those of the heroes of Wagram and Rivoli, at Pere la Chaise. He died, too, of a good old age, in the course of nature; while the tap of the drum was thy death larum, Prince of Moscow.

At the head of the romantic school, and ahead at no moderate distance, is Jean de Carême, whose works are in the hands of every one, and whose name is identified with the great personages of his age. His descent is from the famous Chief of Leo X., and is called Jean de Carême, (Jack of Lent,) in honour of a soupe maigre he invented for his holiness during the abstemious season. He be gan his studies with a regular course of roasting, under celebrated professors, served his time to sauces under Richaut, of the House of the Prince de Condé, and finished his studies with Robert the elder, author of "Elégance Moderne," a person remarkable not only for his great invention, but for a bad memory, as you may see in his epitaph— Qui dès l'age le plus tendre, Inventa la soupe Robert; Mais jamais il ne peut apprendre

Ni son Credo ni son Pater.

After refusing nearly all the sovereigns of Europe, he was prevailed upon to become chief to George

IV. at 1600 guineas per annum. But at Carlton House, he was before the age, and quit after a few months, indignant at wasting his time upon a nation so imperfectly able to appreciate his services. On his return he accepted an appointment from the Baron Rothschild, and remained with "the Jew," dining the best men of a glorious age, and acquiring new laurels till the close of life, with the conscious pride of having consecrated his entire mind to the advantage and honour of his native country.-Drop a tear, gentle reader, if thou hast ever tasted a soupe maigre à la Pape Pie-sept, or Potage à la Rothschild-a tear upon the memory of Jack of Lent! Very, of the Palais Royal, also is of this school, and belongs to the haute cuisine. He feasted the allied sovereigns, and has a monument at Pere la Chaise, on which you will read this simple inscription,

"His life was devoted to the useful arts."

This is a name also to be revered wherever cating is held in proper veneration-a veritable and authentic artist, seeking fame by no diplomatic trick, no ruse de cuisine, but honestly and instinctively obeying the impulses of his splendid abilities. He employed his mornings and heat of imagination in composing-pouring out a vast number of dishes, as Virgil used to do verses of the Æneid, and giving his afternoons, when fancy was cool and judgment predominated, to revisal, correction, and experiment. A person came in once of a morning inconsiderately to consult him, and addressing the waiter, "Pas visible, Monsieur," replied the garçon, with an air significative of his sense of the impropriety, "Il compose;"—and the gentleman with an apologetic bow retired.

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I omit many others of nearly equal dignity, for want of space. There is one, however, of the old school, who like Homer or Hesiod, announced from afar the future glory of his country, whom I cannot pass altogether in silence-Vatel. While in Paris, I went out to Chantilly-the Utica of the gourmands -not, as you may conceive, to see the races, or the stables of the great Condé, that cost thirty millions, or his magnifique maison de Plaisance, which opened its folding doors to a thousand guests of a night, but... I stood in the very spot in which the illustrious Martyr fell upon his sword-the very spot in which he screamed in glorious agony“Quoi le marais n'arrive pas encore!" and died. Poor fellow! scarce had they drawn the fatal knife from his throat when the codfish arrived. I would give more of this tragical history, but it is told in its beautiful details by Madame de Sevigné, to whom the reader is respectfully referred... I must hasten to other branches of my subject.

Houses of established notoriety in Paris are quite numerous, beginning, most of them, upon the fame of a single dish, and many new ones are struggling into notice by some specific excellence. So ingenious persons often practise one of the virtues, and thereby get up a reputation for all the others. For ices you go to Tortoni's, of course; for a vol-auvent, to the Provincial Brothers; for a delicious salmi, to the Café de Paris; to Very's for truffles,

and to the Rocher Cancale for turbots, frogs, and its exquisite wines. The great repute of this house (the Rocher) was originally founded upon oysters. It first overcame the prejudice against those months which are undistinguished by the letter r, serving its oysters equally delicious in all the months of the year. It gave a dinner in 1819, which was the topic of general conversation for one monthabout two weeks more than is given in Paris to a revolution. The bill is published for the eye of the curious in the Almanach des Gourmands. Frogs having been made to talk by sop, and looking so very like little babies, when swimming in their ponds, many dilettanti, especially ladies, feel an aversion to eating them; and the French, being the first of the moderns to introduce them generally upon the table, have infixed thereby a stigma indelibly upon the French name, their bactrachonymical designation being now as significative as the John Bull" of a neighbouring kingdom. An Englishman being compelled lately to go to Paris on business, and holding frogs in abhorrence, especially French frogs, carried his provisions with him. I take the occasion to state that this was an idle apprehension, and that Paris not only has other provisions now, but that this quadruped is even less common, perhaps, in the French than the English kitchen. But, indeed, to the refined and ingenious it is in good esteem, always-especially to professors, doctors, savans, and diplomatists, the classes most addicted to gourmandize in all counThese do not forget that the same immortal bard who sang of heroes and the gods, sang also of bulfrogs.

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tries.

The French being naturally a more social people than the English, and being less wealthy, and having less comfortable homes, frequent more public-houses; so that these establishments are, of course, made to excel in decoration and convenience as well as science. Indeed, cookery at home, and many other things at home, will always want the stimulus necessary to a very high state of improvement. No one of the arts has attained eminence ever, unless fostered by rivalship and public patronage, and brought under the popular inspection. Much is said about the undomesticated way of the French living, but certain it is that the social qualities have gained more than the domestic have lost, and it is certain that the wealthy and fashionable French are after all less erratic in their habits and less discontented with their homes than the domestic and comfortable English. Comfort! comfort! nothing but comfort! To escape they wander everywhere upon the broad sea and land, and reside among the Loo-koos, Creeks, and Negroes -everywhere disgusted. Where-into what uncivilized nook of earth can you go without finding even their women?

"If to the west you roam,

There some blue 's 'at home'
Among the blacks of Carolina.
Or fly you to the east, you see
Some Mrs. Hopkins at her tea

And toast, upon the walls of China."

The very genteel Parisians do not encumber their houses with kitchens at all, and that ugly hebdoma