dal event, a washday, is totally unknown in the Parisian domestic economy. The families dine out in a family group, or by appointment with friends, or the dinner is served in their apartments-a duty which is assigned to an individual you meet everywhere in a white nightcap and apron, and whom they call a traiteur. Not a fellow to be quartered and his head set up on the Temple Bar, but a loyal subject, very welcome in the best houses, and dignified as the entrepreneur general of diplomatic dinners.

What a gay and animated picture the Parisian restaurant with its spacious mirrors, and marble tables gracefully distributed, with its pretty woman at the comptoir, erected for her often at the expense of many thousand francs, and with its linen of the winnowed snow, the whole displayed at night under a blaze of glittering chandeliers, and alive with its joyous and various company! The custom of dining the best bred ladies in these public saloons gives them an air of elegance, decency and vivacity it is in vain to hope for under any direction where there is a public separation of the sexes, as in England and America.

Cooking, like the drama, will conform with public opinion, and bad eaters and bad judges of a play are alike the ruin of good houses, and the reputation of the artists. Wo to the gastronomy of a people whose public taste is gross and uncultivated. In those countries where men dine with cynical voracity in fifteen minutes, why talk of it?-dine, as Careme eloquently and indignantly expresses it, as if they had craws for the comminution of their food after its deglutition.

I remember about five hundred dyspeptics who used to group themselves about the Red Sulphur, (which they preferred of all the Virginia Springs for the abundance of its table;) how they used to saunter about in little squads, or huddle altogether at the source of the little ruby and sulphurous fountain, and discourse the live-long day of gastric juices, peristaltic motions, kneading of stomachs, virtues of aliments and remedies, inquiring diligently into the cause that might be assigned for the almost epidemic prevalence of this disease; some blaming the stars, some hot rolls, others the cacochymical qualities of our American climate, and a few threatened to leave the country. Two Virginia members believed it was the exciting nature of our institutions, and they sat about upon stumps, (these gentlemen having a great affinity for stumps,) pale, abdominous, and wan, and nearly disgusted with republicanism; and there was an Irish gentleman, who had a strong suspicion he might have been changed at nurse, for he was a healthy baby. These things are better managed in China. Chewing is done, they say, at a large Chinese ordinary, by a kind of isochronical movement, regulated by music. They have a leader, as at our concerts, and up go the jaws upon sharp F, and down upon G flat. I wish our " Conscript Fathers" at Washington, if it would not interfere too much with the liberty of the subject, would take this matter under consideration, and if, themselves, they would chew and digest a little more their dinners

and speeches, I beg leave to intimate, it would be not only a personal comfort, but an economy of the money and reputation of the republic. The des tiny of a nation, says a sensible French writer, may depend upon the digestion of the first minister. Who knows, then, but the distress that has fallen, without any assignable cause, like a blight upon our prosperity; that the contentious ill-humours of our two houses; their sparrings, duellings, floggings, removal of deposits, expungings, vetoings, and disruption of cabinets, may not be chiefly owing to an imperfect mastication by the two honourable bodies, the president, secretaries, and others intrusted with the mismanagement of the country. Legislation on such subjects is not without respectable precedent. The emperor Domitian had it brought regularly before his senate what sauce he should employ upon a turbot. It was put to vote in committee of the whole, and the decree (as related by Tacitus, and translated by the Almanach des Gourmands) was a sauce piquante.

The entire force of appetite is concentrated in Paris, upon two meals, and an infinite variety of dishes is sought to give enjoyment to these two meals. To dine on a single dish the French call an "atrocity." The precept of the gourmand is to economize appetite and prolong pleasure, and therefore intermediate refreshments of all kinds are strictly forbidden. Cake-shops are patronized by foreigners only. Madame Felix-alas, how difficult to resist her seducing little pies!-sells 15,000 daily! If you offer to touch one in company with a Frenchwoman, she insists on your not impairing the integrity of your appetite for the regular meals; and she only remarks, "C'est pour les Anglais." While the allies stayed in Paris, Madame Sullot sold from her room, twelve feet square, of her incomparable petits patés 12,000 per day. The Englishman will have his breakfast, will have his lunch, his dinner and supper, and thus anticipating hunger has no meal at all of enjoyment. So, also, is he morose and peevish, snuffing with suspicious nose the flavour of his wine, and approaching his dishes with a degustatory fastidiousness, not unlike that town mouse so well described by Lafontaine. In the cafés you see him alone at his table, spooning his soup, and encouraging appetite by preliminary excitements, or with newspaper, eating and perusing, apparently seeing no one, with an air that intimates the very great honour he does the French nation by dining at all. Moreover, they do not in Paris, as in London, under pretext of giving an appetite, cozen you out of your dinner by oysters. A Frenchman, on a visit to England, once tried this experiment; but, after eating three dozen, he declared he did not feel in the least more hungry than when he began.

The rules of eating of the French table are as accurately defined as axioms of geometry-but these rules I defer to another occasion.

The French Breakfast. It is not your ghost of a breakfast, tea and toast and the newspaper, to guests eating in their sleep. It is late; it is at eleven; above all it is with appetite sharp from early exercise; it is the ornamental butter of gold

in a fine frost-work, as if winter herself had woven it, spicy as Epping or Goshen, and the little loaf and heaving omelet, the agreeable ragout, the fruit and fragrant Burgundy, spread as by the fair hand of Ceres herself upon the snowy linen, bordered blue or red, to enhance its immaculate whiteness. And for those who love better Araby and the Indies, coffee poured from the strainer, fresh and aromatic, into the gilded porcelain, with rich cream, or of a strength to be diluted with more than half milk, poured out exactly at the point of ebullition; but the Chambertin or Burgundy to refined tastes is better. Coffee, pure, and at its side the little glass of Cognac or Maraschino, worth a pilgrimage to Mocha, is the glorious appendix of the dinner.

The French Dinner.-Atmosphere from 13 to 16 degrees, Reaumur. Dining-room simple, with only mirrors and a few agreeable pictures by Teniers. A light soup introduces this meal, by all means without bread, followed by a gentle glass of claret. A rich and heavy soup, where any thing else is to be served, is a total misconception of a dinner. Then follow, with a nice regard to succession and analogy, fish, poultry, roasts, with the entremets, and finally game. A delicate eater may begin with a paté of larks or other petit plat, and overleap the fish, which deadens somewhat the sense of delicious aromas; and the dessert is spared always by the very prudent of both sexes. The monstrous

desserts are superseded by a better taste. Instead of the Louvre or St. Peter's, of such dimensions as required sometimes the ceiling to be removed, you have now for the robust olfactories a little Gruer cheese or for the softer sex, perhaps, an ice, a creme soufflé, and you may offer a Dutch lady an accompaniment to her coffee, a little Cupid just starting from sugar candy into life. Each service must have the air of abundance. Any apprehension of deficiency, or the being obliged to refuse out of politeness, would check the appetite and natura! impulses of the guests. All that you admit upon your plate is to be eaten; in your glass to be drunk; you intimate otherwise the badness of the fare, and insult your host; besides, to have the eyes larger than the appetite is proverbially vulgar. No solos are allowed, or "long yarn," as it is styled, and lions are in bad taste. Also, there is no rush of waiters; servants at the slightest hint anticipate your wants, and a tender conversation is never interrupted by the untimely interposition or removal of a dish; observing always that a sentence, though two-thirds gone, should it even be a declaration, is to be suspended at the entrance of a dinde aux truffes. No one at table descants on the excellence of a dish or the wine. There is no surprise at what one is used to daily. In conversation gentlemen are to be without pretension, and ladies, if possible, without coquetry, and the mind, by all means, left to its natural impulses. No one is pressed-all is "fortuitous elegance and unstudied grace;" this is one of Johnson's definitions of happiness. In the first course the guest is required to be polite merely; he is expected to be gallant in the second, and at the dessert he may

be affectionate; but after the champagne... (no rules of propriety are laid down in any of the books.)

In the drawing-room is merry conversation and music, if excellent, tea of a rich flavour, or punch of the best. Together at eleven-in bed at midnight.

The English and French hare with truffles, is a delicacy well worth our canvas-backs. The Roman ladies believed the food of hares improved beauty. Martial, in an epigram, tells of a woman so ugly in his time, as to set hares at defiance. I do not know if the modern hare inherits this beautifying quality, and few of my female acquaintances have any interest in the inquiry. Many sensible people, however, believe there is such efficacy in nourishment, and it is worth consideration. Achilles, they remind us, was fed on lion's marrow, and Madame Grisi, I have heard said, was nourished in her tender years upon nightingales' tongues, a diet much to be recommended to others of the quire, some of whom seem to have been brought up upon bulfrogs.

It is a matter of much interest to those who would dine out to have their sense of eating, as far as possible, refined. By rich persons, who entertain, bad eaters are held in a kind of horror, and shunned as much as tuneless ears by musicians. To serve an exquisite dish to a face that expresses no rapture-it is Timotheus' song to the Scythian, who preferred the neighing of a horse. And wellbred gourmands are known to have applied often certain diagnostics by which to detect indifferent or refined eaters. When a dish of indisputable excellence is served, it is expected the very aspect of it will excite in a well-organized person all the powers of taste, and any one who, under such circumstances, shows no flashes of desire, no radiant ecstasy of countenance, is noted down at once as unworthy, and left out in subsequent invitations.

The learned author of the Physiognomie du Gout, has given three sets of dishes, (I beg leave to translate for your edification,) which he calls eprouvettes gastronomiques, or tests of good eaters, suited to three several conditions of fortune-for you are not to suppose a person born in the Rue Coquenard, though equally endowed, should have the same acumen as one bred au premier in the Rue Rivoli, or the vicinity of the Palais Royal. Here they

THIRD CLASS.

Revenue 30,000 francs. (Affluence.)

A piece of poultry, 7 lbs., stuffed with truffles of Perigord till it becomes a spheroid.

An enormous pie of Strasbourg, in form of a bastion. A large carp from the Rhine, à la Chambord richly decorated.

Quails with truffles, à la Mosle, laid on pieces of buttered toast, and sweet basil.

A rich pike, piqué, stuffed and soaked in cream of lobsters, secundum artem.

A pheasant à son point, piqué en troufet, resting on a roast, done holy-alliance-fashion.

One hundred asparagus, 5 or 6 lines in diameter, in season, sauce à losmagôme.

Two dozen ortolans, à la Provençale, as described in the secretaire, and cuisinier.

A pyramid of maringues, with vanilla and rose. (This last for women only, and men of feminine and delicate habits.)

Expressions.-Ah, milord! An admirable man is your cook! Such dishes are found on your table only.

The last of these bills, our learned author thinks a decisive test of cultivated taste and natural endowments. "I was lately," says he, at a dinner of gourmands of this third category, and had a fair chance of verifying the effects. After a first course an enormous coc-vierge de Burbezieux, truffé à tout rompre, et un Gibraltar de foie gras de Strasbourg, was brought in.... In the whole assembly this apparition produced a marked effect, but difficult to be described. Something like the silent laugh described by Cooper. In fact conversation ceased among all the guests. Their hearts were too full! The attentions of all were soon turned to the skill of the carvers, and when the plates of distribution were passed round, I saw succeed each other, in every countenance, the fire of desire, the ecstasy of joy, the perfect repose of beatitude!"

Persons are rarely subject to these violent emotions, if not bred in Paris, and to many they might appear exaggerated, but let them look into history. I will cite a few authentic anecdotes in illustration of this part of the subject; and I will show, too, that these gastronomic emotions and elegant dinners do not appertain exclusively to the French, and are marks of a high civilization in all countries. Fontenelle, dining a friend one day, and his politeness getting the better of his reason, yielded reluctantly to his desire of having the asparagus dressed with butter instead of oil, and went slowly towards the head of the stairs to give orders to this effect. During the absence his friend had fallen down in apoplexy, which observing at his return, he hastened back to the stairs: " Cook! cook! cook!" he cried out in a subdued voice, "you can dress them with oil!" and he afforded then to his deceased friend the due offices of humanity.

Judge Savarin, hunting one day with Jefferson, near Paris, caught a couple of hares, and they returned home with their game late in the evening. To lighten the way, the American ambassador related to the judge various anecdotes of Washington; and was encouraged to continue for two or three miles by the close attention and meditative air of his companion. But at length the judge awaking up and breaking through his long silence, said, with the decision of one who has made up his mind, "Yes! I will cook them with truffles," Jefferson being about half through the battle of the Cowpens.

Among the Latins and Greeks a great many interesting examples are recorded of the same kind. Cratinus seeing his wine spilt, one day, died of grief; he had survived the loss of his wife. His fate is recorded in Aristophanes. Apicius sailed to Africa to pass his life there, hearing that the oysters were better than in his native country; but finding them worse, sailed back again. An epicurean is mentioned by Athenæus, who, having eaten a sturgeon at a meal-all but the head-fell into indigestion, and was given up by the doctorssays he, Well! if I must die, I'll thank you to bring me in the rest of the fish." Apicius, as it is well known, spent two millions of dollars upon his table, and when he had but a fippenny-bit left, blew out his brains.

Some very creditable instances have been found even in England. Pope, the actor, one day received the invitation of a lord: "Dear Pope, if you can dine on a roast, come at six; we have nothing else." He came and acted accordingly. At the conclusion, however, a truffled hare of most appetizing flavour was brought in. Astonishment and dismay succeeded in Pope's countenance, as he looked at it, scarce believing his eyes. He took up his knife, tried, but could not... At length, after several vain efforts, pushing his plate aside and putting down his knife, he said, tears starting in his eyes," From an old friend, I did not expect this!"

Of Lady Morgan's France, one of the prettiest pages by far, is her description of a dinner at Rothschild's villa, near Paris, served up by the celebrated Carême, at which she was present. A few sentences of which will show that the fair authoress would have run no risk from M. Gerardin's “ Gastronomical eprouvettes," and furnish proof, if proof be wanting in a matter of such notoriety, that ladies have talents for eating, when rightly cultivated, quite equal to the other sex.

"With less genius," says her ladyship, "than went to the composition of this dinner, men have written epic poems; and if crowns were distributed to cooks as to actors, the wreath of Pesta and Sontag (divine as they are) was never more fairly won than the laurel that should have graced the brow of Carême for this specimen of the intellectual perfection of his art-the standard and gauge of modern civilization. Cruelty, violence, barbarism were the characteristics of men who fed upon the tough fibres of half-fed oxen. Humanity, knowledge, refinement, of the generation, whose tastes and temper are regulated by the science of such philosophers as Carême, and such Amphytrions as Rothschild."

Of the dinner, she says, "It was in season; it was up to the time-in the spirit of the age. There was no perruque in its composition, no trace of the 'wisdom of our ancestors,' in a single dish; no high-spiced sauces, no sauce blanche: no flavour of cayenne and alspice, no tincture of catsup, and walnut pickles; no visible agency of those vulgar elements of cookery of the good old times. Fire and water distillations of the most delicate viands exhaled in silver dews, with chemical precision, 'On tepid clouds of rising steam,

formed the fond of all. Every meat presented its natural aroma; every vegetable its shade of verdure; margonnese was fried in ice, (as Ninon said of Sevigne's heart,) and the tempered chill of the plobian, which held the place of the eternal fondus and soufflets of an Englishman's table, anticipated the shock, and broke it of the exaggerated avalanche," &c. &c.

It is scarcely fair to quote farther of a work so accessible to all, or I would give you also her description of the dining-room, so romantically standing apart from the house, in the shade of oranges; of the elegant pavilion of green marble, refreshed by fountains that shot into the air through scintillating streams. Of the table itself, covered with its beautiful and picturesque dessert, emitting no odour that was not in perfect conformity with the freshness of the scene, and fervour of the season."No burnished gold reflected the glowing sunset, nor brilliant silver dazzled the eye; porcelain, beyond the price of all precious metals by its beauty and its fragility; every plate a picture, consorted with the general character of sumptuous simplicity, which reigned over the whole, and showed how well the master of the feast had consulted the genius of the place in all."

Lady Morgan solicited and obtained permission to see and converse with the illustrious chef, who in the evening entered the circle of the saloon, where a feeling and interesting interview ensued. (See her own account of it.) Such honours are every day lavished upon heroes, and surely he who teaches to nourish men is well worth him who teaches to kill them.

Lord Byron has expressed his dislike of " eating | women." But his lordship had an infinity of little capricious dislikes. Monsieur Savarin, of much better taste in such matters, describes his "pretty gourmande under arms," as one of the most interesting of objects. From the stimulus of eating, she has greater brilliancy of eyes and grace of conversation; the vermilion of her lips is of a deeper dye, and she is improved in all the attributes of her beauty, and in all respects better recommended to our sympathies, as the honey-bee that sips the golden flower is better liked for its appetites. Nothing that is natural can be justly called an imperfection, and I would respectfully suggest in reply to his fastidious lordship that the first temptation of mankind was eating, and that it began with the fair sex.

LONDON OMNIBUSES.

FROM THE AMERICAN IN LONDON.

Ir first impressions are so very potent, I shall hate London abominably. I have come in by the East End, which is enough for ill humour of itself, and I am lodged in Threadneedle-street, with the instinct of the owl, who finds out a sickly cave

to mope and be melancholy in. A single ray of sun has not fallen upon the island since I set foot on it, four days ago. I left in Paris an agreeable circle of friends, bright suns, and the lilacs of the Tuileries in bloom, and am here, doing penance in a back room of "Little Britain," where Boreas shakes blue devils from his dripping wings.....

The crowd upon the street, of vehicles crammed to suffocation, and the dense mass of pedestrians, with the addition of umbrellas, on a wet day, is indeed a spectacle. As I stood wrapped up in a stupid astonishment, and looking on, I met an adventure, which made me a ridiculous part of the exhibition. I saw a person at some distance, a little above the others, who, with a most affable smile of recognition, beckoned me toward him. Supposing it a friend, of whom I had just now so much need, who had observed me, I made haste to obey. He had mounted on the rear of an omnibus, the better to draw my attention. Close by, in a similar situation, was another, who, as I approached, disputed with him the honour of my acquaintance. This vay, sir!" said the one; "This vay, sir!" said the other, both with great animation. I now thought they were warning me of some imminent danger, but not knowing in what direction, I stood still, paying them my respects alternately; a kind of Scotch reel, setting now to this lady, now to that; till at length I made up my mind in favour of one, without giving preference to either, as happens often in love, or a president's election, and stepped in, aided by the civility of the gentleman, who slammed the door upon my heels. In a French omnibus, you get in, to be sure, with impediments, sitting about on the women's laps; but they take it in good part, and assist your movements, and you even sometimes get into little conversations: "I hope I have not hurt you, Ma'am?" "Au contraire, Monsieur;" and the whole affair is agreeable enough. But only think of running the gauntlet between two rows of Englishmen's faces! "Take care, sir!"-" Hal-loo!" It is a cold bath at the Yellow Springs! But I had no sooner reached the back seat, than I recollected, with great presence of mind, that I had not the slightest intention of riding, and that I must absolutely, and in spite of the general displeasure, get out. However, I found that one always leaves a crowded vehicle with general consent, and I passed out without any other obstacle than from the conductor (classically "cad") insisting on sixpence, his fee for having outwitted me, which I willingly paid, and again set foot on the pavement. I observed, by the faces of my fellow passengers, that they understood the joke, and enjoyed it at my expense; but swearing a little French, in getting out, put the scandal upon the French nation, and spared brother Jonathan's blushes. The mistake was natural enough, since neither in France nor America do they solicit passengers in this senseless man

ner.

Ir is a disgrace to the literary character of this nation that so little is known of the works of RICHARD HENRY DANA, who as a poet and as a novelist is worthy to be ranked with any living writer in the English language. For himself he can afford to "bide his time," but it is a loss as well as a dishonour to the people that The Buccaneer and Paul Felton and his other productions are not more read. In the preface to the only and very imperfect edition of his prose works that has been published he says, "To be liked of those whose hearts and minds I esteem would be unspeakable comfort to me, and would open sympathies with them in my nature, which lie deep in the immortal part of me, and which, therefore, though beginning in time, will doubtless live on in eternity." To such he commends himself, and by such, so far as he is known, he is appreciated; but for more than ten years, owing to our system of literary piracy, which by giving all foreign works to American publishers without copy-money shuts out the native author from competition, there has not been a set of his poems. tales, or essays in the market, and the great mass even of intelligent readers know nothing about them.

Mr. Dana comes of good blood. His grandfather, Richard Dana, was an eminent lawyer in Massachusetts and an active whig before the Revolution, and his father, Francis Dana, was minister to Russia, member of Congress, and of the convention in Massachusetts for the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and afterward chief justice of the Commonwealth. His mother's father, William Ellery, of Rhode Island, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and through him he is descended from the early governors, Bradstreet and Dudley.

Mr. Dana was born at Cambridge, near Boston, on the fifteenth of November, 1787. When nine or ten years of age he went to Newport, Rhode Island, where he remained until within a year or two of entering Harvard College, in which he was a student three years. In time he became a member of the

bar, but feeble health and great constitutional sensitiveness soon convinced him that the practice of the law would never do for him, as much as he had been interested in the study of it. Yet one would almost have supposed he should have "taken naturally" to the profession, seeing that his father and grandfather were of it, and his mother's father and grandfather also. However, he was long enough at the bar to prevent the double line that had come down to him being broken, and his two sons, (the eldest of whom, Richard H. Dana, Jr., is well known in the literary world by his admirable work entitled Two Years before the Mast,) are now among the most successful counsellors and advocates of Boston.

Mr. Dana was of the glorious old federal party, of which Washington, Hamilton, Marshall, Jay, Ames, and so many other great men had been ornaments; and his first public production was a politico-literary oration, pronounced on the fourth of July, 1814. From this time he wrote little, perhaps nothing, for the press, until 1817, when he contributed his first article to the North American Review. It was a brilliant and justly severe criticism of the poetry of Moore. Not long after, he became a member of the North American Club, and when his relative, Edward T. Channing, now a Harvard professor, was made editor of the Review, he took some part in the management of it, according to an agreement between them, and continued to do so until Channing entered the college, in 1820, when his connection with the work entirely ceased. Among the articles which he wrote for it was one on Hazlitt's Lectures on the British Poets, which excited much attention at the time. The Pope and Queen Anne school was then triumphant, and the dicta of Jeffrey were law. Dana praised Wordsworth and Coleridge, and saw much to admire in Byron; he thought poetry was something more than a recreation; that it was something superinduced upon the realities of life; he believed the ideal and the spiritual might be as real as the visible and the tangible;