to adventure, notwithstanding their of the regent were celebrated for their strong stomacks, the eating of them." Observe the strength of the word "young," as commentators say, in this passage. Does it not suggest that a nice young partridge would have been particularly "convenient" to the worthy doctor? He was undoubtedly a man of refined taste; for one little meal that he suggests might have been designed by the author of "The Original" so æsthetic is it in its brief simplicity: a couple of poached eggs, sprinkled with vinegar, seasoned with black pepper and salt, served with bread and butter, and completed with a draught of pure claret. This is nearly as dainty as Brillat Savarin's Curé's Omelette "with the old wine sparkling in the crystal decanter." No: I think that it may be conceded that for the views of men of educated taste in regard to foodtreatises written for society, that is to say, by members of society, by gourmets for gourmets, and by raconteurs for appreciative readers, all of them of literary rather than practical value-we must wait until Grimod de la Reynière, the Marquis de Cussy, Fayot, and Brillat Savarin took it into their heads to publish their experiences.

In order to judge of the writings of the authorities whom I have just named, it is necessary to picture to ourselves the days in which they lived, the fashion of the time, and the state of society around them. To do this properly we must go back to that period in the history of gastronomy when the art of cookery became the subject of enlightened consideration in France to the times, in short, of Louis XIV., the Regent Philippe d'Orleans, and Louis XV. In the reign of the first of these rulers we read that Condé, the great captain, Colbert, the statesman, Madame de Sévigné, the accomplished narrator of the tragic death of Vatel, and many other distinguished people, encouraged the new school of cookery which Catherine de Medicis had founded. During the Regency which followed, attention appears to have been paid, for the first time, to the chemistry of cookery, while the dinners

combination of refinement and art, "for matelotes of the most tempting quality," says Brillat Savarin, "and for turkeys superbly stuffed." Louis XV., himself a practical cook of singular proficiency, continued to foster the development which his predecessors had so zealously promoted. It was to him that Madame du Barry gave the celebrated petit souper which led to the institution of the Order of the Cordon Bleu for accomplished cuisinières, and he is credited with the invention of "tables volantes," which descended after each course through the floor and rose again replenished with fresh surprises. Unlike the rest of his race, Louis XVI. was not a gourmand, and in his time the royal table was no longer what it had been, but the taste of society outside the palace had been highly cultivated too long to be seriously affected by this change. Refinement and luxury continued in the houses of the nobility, the dignitaries of the Church, and the financiers. But a crash came of course with the Revolution. Society was then shaken to the very foundation, and many of the chief patrons of gastronomy were swept away. It is, however, a mistake to suppose that the art of cookery received much more than a check. What really occurred was this. The great private houses were of course closed, the court ceased to exist, and the princely hospitality of the days that I have just spoken of came altogether to an end. But the cooks survived, and before long found a new field for employment in the restaurants, for as soon as the Reign of Terror terminated, and people were once more clothed properly and in their right minds, their appreciation of good food revived, and these places-destined to become a renowned feature of the French capital-rapidly increased in popularity. Their history is worth tracing.

It is on record that about the year 1770 a man arose who evolved the idea of opening a room where meat and drink might be provided for wayfarers, and very rightly concluded that if the former were well-cooked and nicely

patrons would not grudge a payment somewhat in excess of the actual cost of the meal. This genius was known by the peculiar name of Champ d'Oiseau, and his cabaret was established in the Rue des Poulies. So successful was the venture that by 1789 it had paved the way to a hundred others, and by the end of the century to very many more.

served, and the latter sound, such tion after Waterloo the Parisian restaurants attained their highest pitch of excellence and success. Society, such as it was during the Directory Consulate and First Empire, did not distinguish itself by entertainments, though here and there we read of special exceptions. The dinners of Cambacérès, Talleyrand, Barras, the Princesse Napoleon Borghese (Pauline Bonaparte), Junot, Duroc, and M. de FontanesWe now come to the time when the whom Mr. Hayward alludes to as "the first book of the series we are discuss- upstart chiefs of the Republic, the ing was published. In 1803 M. Grimod plundering Marshals, and parvenus de la Reynière produced his "Almanach nobles of Napoleon,"-were a good deal des Gourmands," "the first serious and spoken of, and are mentioned by the sustained attempt," says Mr. Hay- writers I have named. The emperor, ward, "to invest gastronomy with the who we all know was very far from air of an intellectual and refined pur- being a gourmand, seems to have acsuit." This work clearly indicates the knowledged the importance of successcondition of things to which I have tried ful dinner-giving as a means for to lead up, for under the heading, creating and extending political influ"Itinéraire d'un gourmand dans divers ence. "Tenez bonne table et soignez les quartiers de Paris," which forms the femmes," said he, on despatching the second section of the book, he names the Abbé de Pradt to Poland, and, observes best among some five hundred places Alexandre Dumas the elder, "il voulait where good food could be got. He que tout grand fonctionnaire de moreover mentions three distinct causes l'Empire le fût. 'Ayez bonne table,' which co-operated in their rise and disait il, 'dépensez plus que vos approgress. First, the rage for English pointements, faites des dettes, je les fashions which prevailed amongst the payerai,'" and, adds Dumas, he did so. French during the ten or fifteen years To return, however, to the writings of which preceded the Revolution, "for the Grimod de la Reynière. The "AlmaEnglish," says he, "as is well known, nach" was no doubt useful at the time almost always take their meals in as a resumé of the seasons in which taverns." Secondly, "the sudden inun- various kinds of fish, flesh, fowl, fruit, dation of undomiciled legislators who, and vegetables are at their best, and as finishing by giving the ton, drew by a gastronomical chronicle of the months their example all Paris to the cabaret," of the year; useful also may have been and thirdly, the breaking-up of the rich the "Itinéraire" I have already menestablishments, which drove the chefs tioned. But the "variétés, morales to the public for support. At any rate, nutritives," and "anecdotes gourit seems clear that the bon-vivant of the mandes" with which the book is wound period was better able to gratify his up were before long so completely palate at his favorite restaurant than at eclipsed by the writings of the more the houses of his friends. The cele- brilliant littérateur, Brillat Savarin, brated Rocher de Cancale was a place that they probably enjoyed but a shortof note much frequented by this author lived reputation. "Mais tout son exceland his convives; indeed, he was helped lent esprit a été jeté au vent," says M. in the composition of the menus which Fayot, "pour n'avoir pas été resserré appear in his "Manuel des Amphitry- dans une forme élégante et précise ons" by the proprietor of that estab- comme celle de la Physiologie du lishment, M. Balaine. It may be said, goût." In his next book, "Le Manuel indeed, that between the period referred des Amphitryons," de la Reynière to in the "Almanach" and the Restora- confined himself to a dissertation

dure; the mayonnaise was fried in ice, like Ninon's description of Sevigné's heart ('une citrouille frite à la neige'), and the tempered chill of the plombière (which held the place of the eternal fondus and soufflés of our English tables) anticipated the stronger shock, and broke it, of the exquisite avalanche which, with the hue and odor of freshgathered nectarines, satisfied every sense and dissipated every coarser flavor. With less genius than went to the composition of this dinner men have written epic poems." This was an occasion, we have been told, on which it pleased Carême to affect a studied simplicity, the mood in which, according to contemporary criticism, he was more successful than when he went in for extreme elaboration.

pensed his hospitality in a right every vegetable its own shade of verprincely manner, like the English Lord Castlereagh, George IV., the Emperor Alexander, and other lavish patrons of la haute cuisine. Talleyrand, it appears, always played a rubber of whist after dinner in silence, and then retired to his cabinet de travail, when his flatterers observed, "Le Prince réfléchit," but the straightforward "Monseigneur dort!" These souvenirs should be taken perhaps with a grain of salt. It is not often, to be sure, that ministers of state, with a great reputation for their entertainments, are criticised in all the stern reality of type by their chefs; and we may be quite sure that any personage who might so far forget himself as to keep his august eye upon his larder and his kitchen expenses, would fare badly if submitted to the censorship of his cook.

Quite the most charming sketch in its way among the "Classiques" is Lady Morgan's account of the dinners she enjoyed at the houses of M. de Ségur and the Baron de Rothschild, the latter especially. The fair writer was a pronounced admirer of Carême's art, and the great chef, then at his best, was in the service of the baron. Certainly no more delicate compliment to his skill has been handed down to us than this: "To do justice to the science and research of a dinner so served would require a knowledge of the art equal to that which produced it; its character, however, was that it was in season, that it was up to its time-that it was in the spirit of the age-that there was no perruque in its composition, no trace of the wisdom of our ancestors in a single dish, no high-spiced sauces, no dark-brown gravies, no flavor of cayenne and allspice, no tincture of catsup and walnut pickle, no visible agency of those vulgar elements of cooking of the good old times, fire and water. Distillations of the most delicate viands extracted in silver dews with chemical precision-

On tepid clouds of rising steamformed the fond of all. Every meat presented its own natural aroma

Lady Morgan's flowery tribute to Carême may be regarded as a fitting link between the French writers of the earlier half of the century, who treated the subject of cookery philosophically, and the first Englishman who took up his pen in a similar vein. This author was Thomas Walker, who in his unhappily short-lived periodical, the Original, contributed a most interesting series of papers on the "Art of Dining." His views, which were published in 1835, must have positively astounded his English readers, who were at that time addicted to much pomp and ceremony in their ponderous entertainments. The cumbersome and ridiculously ostentatious system of serving dinners in relays of numerous dishes, every one of which was placed upon the table, was universally followed and looked upon as perfect. Big battalions of family plate, with the silver sauce-boats on their flanks, were thus paraded for general admiration, while the major portion of the food was to a great extent cooled and spoilt by being stupidly brought into the fighting-line before it was required. Against this utterly inartistic way of doing things Walker wrote in the most trenchant manner, and did not hesitate to denounce it as palpably erroneous from a gastronomical point of view, and "strongly tainted with barbarism and