quently quizzed, and betrayed all the petulance of a child, and more than a child's curiosity to learn who had reported the circumstance"-as if the loss of a whole day's thought and labour was not enough to excite the petulance of any man, let alone his belonging to the genus irritabile!

A green apricot tart is commonly considered the best tart that is made; but a green apricot pudding is a much better thing. A cherry dumpling is better than a cherry tart. A rhubarb pie is greatly improved by a slight infusion of lemon when eaten. A beefsteak pudding, again, is better than the corresponding pie; but oysters and mushrooms are essential to its success. A mutton-chop pudding, with oysters,

but without mushrooms, is excellent.

The late Lord Dudley could not dine comfortably without an apple-pie, as he insisted on calling it, contending that the term tart only applied to open pastry. Dining, when foreign secretary, at a grand dinner at Prince Esterhazy's, he was terribly put out on finding that his favourite delicacy was wanting, and kept on inurmuring pretty audibly, in his absent way, "God bless my soul! no apple-pie!'

Jekyll was dining at Holland House with the late Duke of York, and, knowing his Royal Highness's taste, requested the honour of taking cognac with him. Wonderful to say, there was none in the house, and Lady Holland accused Jekyll of having called for it with full knowledge of the fact. "Really, Lady Holland," was the reply, "I thought that, if I had called for a slice of broiled rhinoceros in Holland House, it would have been handed to me without a moment's delay."

With regard to drinkables, the same attention to unity and simplicity is to be enforced :—

"I should lay down," says Mr. Walker, "the same rules

as to wines as I have already done as to meats, that is, simplicity on the same and variety on different days. Port only, taken with or without a little water at dinner, is excellent, and the same of claret. I think, on ordinary occasions, such a system is by far the most agreeable. Claret, I mean genuine, undoctored claret, which, in my opinion, is the true taste, is particularly good as a dinner wine, and is now to be had at a very reasonable price. I would not wish better than that given at the Athenæum at three and sixpence a bottle. Rhenish wines are very wholesome and agreeable, drunk simply without other wines. I must not here pass over altogether the excellences of malt liquor, though it is rather difficult to unite the use of it judiciously with that of wine. When taken together, it should be in great moderation; but I rather prefer a maltliquor day exclusively now and then by way of variety, or to take it at luncheon. There is something extremely grateful in the very best table beer, and it is to be lamented it is so rarely to be met with in the perfection of which it is capable. That beverage at dinner, and two or three glasses of first-rate ale after, constitute real luxury, and I believe are a most wholesome variety. Good porter needs no praise; and bottled porter iced is in hot weather most refreshing. Cider cup, lemonade, and iced punch in summer, and hot in winter, are all worthy of their turns: but I do not think turns come so often as they ought to do. We go on the beaten track without profiting by the varieties which are to be found on every side.”

Instead of icing punch, the preferable mode is to make it with iced soda-water.* The gin-punch made on this principle at the Garrick Club is one of the best things we know. It was the favourite beverage of the late Theodore Hook. One hot evening in July he strolled into the Garrick in that equivocal state of thirstiness which it requires something more than common to quench. On describing the sensation, he was recommended to make trial of the punch, and a

* Pour half-a-pint of gin on the outer peel of a lemon, then a little lemon-juce, sugar, a glass of Maraschino, about a pint and a quarter of water, and two bottles of iced soda-water. The result will be three pints of the punch in question.

jug was compounded immediately, under the personal inspection of the inventor, the late Stephen Price. A second followed-a third, with the accompaniment of some chops-a fourth-a fifth-a sixth-at the expiration of which Mr. Hook went away to keep a dinner engagement at Lord Canterbury's. He always ate little; on this occasion he ate less: and a friend. inquired in a fitting tone of anxiety if he was ill. "Not exactly," was the reply; "but my stomach won't bear trifling with, and I was tempted to take a biscuit and a glass of sherry about three."

The wines which may be deemed indispensable at a complete English dinner, and which consequently it is of paramount importance to have good, are sherry, champagne, port, and claret. The palate is confused and made indiscriminating by a greater number; although anything supremely good of its kind will always be welcome as a variety. Age is not a merit abstractedly and in itself, although the richest and fullest-bodied wines will keep longest, and the best vintages are most carefully preserved. The Comte de Cossé, who succeeded the Duc d'Escars as maîtred'hôtel to Louis XVIII., possessed some port which was more than a hundred years old, bought originally for his royal master. It had lost its colour, and its flavour was by no means fine. On the other hand, competent judges are agreed that about the finest port ever known was found at Wootton, in 1824, in some cellars that had been been bricked up not later, and perhaps much earlier, than the time of George Grenville, the minister, who died in 1770. The sherry produced at the City banquet given to the Queen and Prince Albert was as remarkable for its quality as for its age. The Rhenish wines are no exception to the rule; and what is produced as "old hock" in this country is commonly thin and acid. It is the year, or vintage- not the mere lapse of

time which stamps the value. Thus, hock of 1811 (the comet year) is more valuable than hock of 1801, and claret of 1834 than claret of 1824.

Canning used to say that any sane person who affected to prefer dry champagne to sweet, lied. The illustrious statesman had probably never tasted the original Stock's dry champagne, the memory of which is still dear to the connoisseur. It used to be drunk at Crockford's at seven shillings a bottle. It subsequently sold for a guinea a bottle. Lord Lichfield, Lord Donegall, and Mr. Orby Hunter, bought a great deal of it. To the best of our information, this was the very wine of which four Irish members drank fifteen bottles at a sitting, at a celebrated club, in the worst year of Irish distress.

The portentous growth of London has astonished and puzzled many who have not duly reflected on the causes of this phenomenon. Amongst these, the increased and daily increasing facilities for social enjoyment must not be lost sight of. One effect of steam communication, by land and water, has been to concentrate in the metropolis a vast variety of formerly untransportable luxuries, which have consequently ceased, in a great measure, to give local distinction to the localities in which they are respectively produced. It is no longer necessary to travel to the coast of Devonshire to enjoy John-dory, or to Worcester to taste lampreys in perfection; and the London fishmongers contrive that Severn and Christchurch salmon, caught in the morning, shall be served at a seven o'clock dinner in Pall Mall.

But the improvement and multiplication of clubs form the grand feature of metropolitan progress. There are between twenty and thirty of these admirable establishments, at which a man of moderate habits can dine more comfortably for three or four shillings (including half a pint of wine) than he could have

dined for four or five times that amount at the coffee houses and hotels which were the habitual resort of the bachelor class, in the corresponding rank of life, during the first quarter of the century. At some of the clubs the Travellers', the Coventry, and the Carlton, for example - the most finished luxury may be enjoyed at a trifling cost.* The best judges are agreed that it is utterly impossible to dine better than at the Carlton, when the cook has fair notice, and is not hurried, or confused by a multitude of orders. But great allowances must be made when a simultaneous rush occurs from both Houses of Parliament; and the caprices of individual members of such institutions are sometimes extremely trying to the temper and reputation of a chef. During Ude's presidency over the Crockford cuisine, one ground of complaint formally addressed to the committee was, that there was an admixture of onion in the soubise.

Colonel Damer, happening to enter Crockford's one evening to dine early, found Ude walking up and down in a towering passion, and naturally inquired what was the matter. "The matter, Monsieur le Colonel! Did you see that man who has just gone out? Well, he ordered a red mullet for his dinner. I made him a delicious little sauce with my own hands. The price of the mullet marked on the carte was two shillings; I added sixpence for the sauce. He refuses to pay the sixpence. That imbécille appa

rently believes that the red mullets come out of the sea with my sauce in their pockets!" in their pockets!" The imbécille might have retorted that they do come out of the sea with their appropriate sauce in their pockets; but this forms no excuse for damping the genius of a Ude.

* Since this was written, the Coventry has been broken up, the Carlton cuisine has fallen off, and that of the Athenæum has immeasurably improved. Indeed no club can now boast a better; thanks to the exertions of the chef, M. Alexander Ferrand, who takes a just pride in the successful prosecution of his art.