tumnal tint, such as the leaves and the fruit wear towards the close of

autumn

"Th' embrowning of the fruit [read fowl] which tells

How rich within the soul of sweetness dwells."

The reader will observe that this barde, or tranche de lard, by no means includes the "larding" of the fowl, for which the more common word in use is "piquer," though the verb "larder" is sometimes put into requisition to express the same idea. This matter of larding-one of the greatest improvements in the science of cookery, is but ill understood in England, though it has long and deservedly flourished in France. I shall explain the process by which it is performed. Take your lard (as Mrs. Glasse phrases it) and let it be cut into numerous thin and fibrous threads; then, with a needle, (duly loaded with the lard) pass it through the body of your bird, whose breast and body presently assume somewhat the appearance of the back of a hedgehog, from the number of small prickles which stand out in bold and beautiful relief to the eye. In fact, to compare great things with small, larding is to a fowl what rivers are to a country-the numerous intersections of the one and the other, fertilise, moisten, and adorn both— I mean the fowl and the country. The French term "pique" has its origin in the office of larding being performed with a needle; the verb "piquer" signifying to stitch, to mark, to prick, and finally, to lard.

But it is not alone in the larding we are surpassed by our more mercurial neighbours. In France, even in a popular sense, there are an hundred ways of dressing fowl; in England, popularly speaking, there are but three or four. It were tedious at this moment to go into the detail of the French system; but it will suffice to enumerate two very popular dishes, not in general tavern use in England, however well known in this country. I mean the "volaille aux truffes," and the "fricassé de poulet." The impediment to the more general use of the first is, that truffles do not grow in England, and that hence they are more or less an expensive article. There are many impediments to the general adaptation of the "fricassé de poulet" as an English dish. Imprimis, the difficulty and cost of making the sauce, which consists of eggs, flour, wine, truffles and mushrooms, and which must be excellent, and white as snow, otherwise the "fricassé," like all good things, ("corruptio optimi pessima") is about the worst dish under heaven. Indeed it has often astonished me that more general attempts have not been made to introduce truffles into England, inasmuch as vast sums of money are paid out of the country to procure them. If there be any of my readers who have never seen or eaten a truffle (a thing by the way I can hardly imagine) I may here remark that it somewhat resembles a small wet new potatoe. In France, a species of dog, commonly known by the name of the "truffle hound," is used to root the truffles out of the earth; though the pigs not only very frequently perform this office, but swallow the truffle into the bargain. I now come to the "pièces de resistance," known by the name of joints in England. Of these you hardly see any at a really French dinner at least I mean such joints as ribs of beef, haunches of mutton, loins of veal, legs of pork, aitch bone, &c. The French do not delight in these large joints, though they eat as much of solids to the

full as their English neighbours. On the contrary, our neighbours prefer many and small dishes. At the same time I must say that I have seen at French tables, where there were no English, as fine legs and shoulders of mutton as I have ever met with in England. Indeed the "près sallé" mutton (which is that fed near a salt-marsh) and which fetches two or three sous a pound higher than any other in the Paris market, fully equals to surpass it would be impossible-the South Down. Veal too is a prime, perhaps the primest, meat in France. In beef alone Gaul is inferior to Britain, though the oxen of Pontoise may vie with any in Leicestershire.

In the matter of "pates," of game of all sorts, in "patisserie," in cheese, as well as in fruit, the French beat us à merveille. One great obstacle to the general use of game in England arises from our system of Game Laws; and before the Revolution these laws were as bad, if not worse in France, than with us. Previously to 1789, a farmer in France could not cut down his crop, however over-ripe it might have been, till a certain day, on which it was conjectured the game were properly fed and fattened, and even then he could not kill the birds which had been reared on the produce of his land. Now, however, thanks to the Revolution, which in mightier matters far, has accomplished worlds, of good, a man may cut down the produce of his land as he lists, and by procuring a porte d'armes (which if you have the signature of two proprietors in your district, you get from the mayor or sous prefet for thirty francs) you can slaughter game to your heart's content, from sunrise to sunset. Hence its general use and great cheapness. In the meanest auberge you are sure to find partridge, snipe, woodcock, and hares, and all well dressed. I remember having eaten at Evreux, at a small inn, a salmi of partridge of exquisite flavour; and a hare pique'd in no degree inferior. Both reminded me of the witty remark in the "Almanach des Gourmands:"-" Ainsi cuit on aurait mangé le Pape ;" and though a good Catholic, I thought, in swallowing the sauce of the salmi, that I very much resembled "the glory of the priesthood and the shame," Erasmus, who on information being given to his then Holiness, by some then Bishop of Chester, not that the author of the "Naufragium" had been playing a rubber at whist, but almost as harmless a recreation, eating flesh on a Friday, wrote to the successor of St. Peter to say, that "truly he had a most Catholic heart, but a very Protestant stomach."

Indeed, I never had a serious thought of adding to the numbers of the "New Reformation" (which that kiln-dried casuist, Dr. Doyle, says will do away with the fruits of the old), by my conversion, till a broad-shouldered Irish Jesuit exclaimed against me one Friday at the “Rocher Concale," (where this disciple of Loyola had swallowed six different kinds of fish, and was discussing a bottle of Chambertin by way of pastime,) for dipping too deeply into the mysteries of one of Chevet's "Foie-gras" pies. Now, if a man should risk his salvation for any thing mundane (which I am very far from contending), it should be for a "foie-gras "pie; and though the Jesuits may read me out of meeting for my addiction to the Strasburgh paté of diseased livers, I will yet contend that I am "Catholique en gros et Protestant en detail;" or, like a worthy friend of mine, an Irish barrister, who, when "taken in the manour," on a Saturday, by Mr. O'Connell, with a piece

of roast beef on his plate, exclaimed in answer to the remark-"This is a fast-day," ," "I know it is, and I have eaten as much fish as any two of you!" Like my excellent friend, I will even undertake the Herculean task of eating twice as much fish as Mr. O'Connell, and his friends of the Association, provided I get a dispensation to swallow the "foie-gras" immediately after.

There are a thousand and one entrés, entremets, hors d'œuvres, &c. which it were as impossible to discuss at one dinner as in one article. These, therefore, with the long catalogue of wines-" quos nunc prescribere longum est"-I mean to " serve up" some other month.

At present, it is gratifying to think that the extended and familiar intercourse which exists between the two countries, is not only beneficial in a national but in a social point of view; and those Frenchmen,-the fewer in number, and the more inconsiderable in rank,--who heretofore hated England and Englishmen" parcequ'ils versaient du beurre fondu sur leur veau roti," will now learn that a better taste prevails, and that the chief supporters and customers of all the best French houses in Paris are these very English whose tastes were so barbarous. Chevet himself, whose magnificent Magazin de Comestibles in the Palais Royal is stored with the Volaille of Brives, the carp of Strasburgh, the tripe of Caen, the oysters of Concale, the larks of Bourdeaux, and all that is brightest in gastronomy, will admit that some of his best customers are among the English; and if we but look into the "Café de Paris;" the "Café Laitier;"" Very's;" the "Trois Frères;" the "Rocher;" the "Hardi," or "Grignon's," we shall find the English at each and all, praising the bread and water of the first; the soups of the second; the "Cotelette à la Maintenon" of Very; the ices of Hardi; the fish of the Rocher; the "Cotelette à la provençale" of the Trois Frères, and things in general at Grignon's. This I consider evidence of the good taste and discrimination of our nation, as well as of their improvement in the art of cookery, or, which is nearly the same, in their relish for the productions of the science. On this fact I ground my opinion, that things (I speak in reference to cookery) cannot long remain as they are in England-" Non progredi est regredi ;" and if we do not come up to the French soon, we must go back to the culinary system of the natives of the Pampas, so well described by Captain Head in his late work. One good effect would result from the adoption of the French system :--no longer, if Gallic regimen were followed, should we hear complaints of biliousness and nervousness-words unknown in the vocabulary of a Frenchman. Perhaps the natives of the Pampas know not these ailments either; but then they ride a hundred miles a day, and drink water, " things not dreamt of in our philosophy." But the reader will say to me,

"I own the soft impeachment ;" and subscribe myself the reader's very obedient servant-

LOUIS EUSTACHE EUDE, the younger.

A NIGHT BY LOCH LOMOND.

I HAVE been almost out of humour with the application of steam to the purpose of locomotion ever since the launch of the Marion upon the romantie waters of Loch Lomond. It is very well-nay, it is a very proud, and a very delightful thing, to see on the neighbouring Clyde, that youngest and favourite daughter of the ocean, a steam-vessel, traversing from port to port, as if by special licence of the elements, and realising in herself the heretofore fiction of the phantom-ship, which mariners of old were wont to encounter on their perilous passage, flying through the very body of the tempest. Even her cargo of merchants and artisans, and the various vulgarities of a trading-coast, are there not out of place; the portly burgher and the pale mechanic are seen proudly riding over the subject waves, which appear to be fretting at the sovereignty their wealth and industry have obtained; and often, while watching the triumphant expression of some grim and blackened visage bending over the gunwale, I have wondered within myself whether I did not behold one of the very individuals whose magic hammer had created the miracles that surrounded us, and forged a chain for the ocean more powerful than the golden fetters of Xerxes. But on the lakethe lone, the beautiful-the sacred haunt of imagination, the very home of poetry and romance, and in particular the innocent of all smoke, save that of the small still, a steam-vessel presents a spectacle the most shocking and incongruous that Art ever insulted Nature withal. In vain, however, the Highland winds swept in cold repulsive gusts from the remotest corners of the Loch; in vain the Leven flung down his indignant waters to the Clyde with tenfold rapidity-the invading nondescript crawled steadily onward against storm and tide, and the black banner of science, half smoke half steam, floated triumphant on the waters of Lomond. Onward she crawled with her foul freight of spinners and weavers, and clerks and shopmen, and merchants and manufacturers, collected from the whole mass of the Paisley bodies, the Greenock folk, and the Glasgow people;" with here and there a southron interspersed-from Brummagem or Cockayne-who raised his eye-glass to the eternal mountains, and declared them to be " very nice articles indeed!" The Genius Loci retired before the rabble-rout, both in sorrow and in anger, forsaking island after island as it neared them; and then, relinquishing for ever his ancient domain, stoned backwards over the moors to Loch Katrine. Since that period Loch Lomond is to me a "Yar row visited,"-may I say visitationed?-the spell is broken which made it once so dear to me, and which drew my truant steps so often to its shores; its islands are merely islands, and associated with no other ideas than that of a geographical definition; Rob Roy's cave is a dirty and paltry hole; and the tartaned beggar who sits on the rocks above it, and tells the gaping visitant that "his name is Macgregor," with an air which seems rather to demand a toll than solicit an alms, is no other than a lowland loon in disguise. Ten years ago, before the appearance of the steamer, we did not talk of a visit to Loch Lomond as we do here of a ride to Hampstead or Richmond; it was an adventure involving, if not actual peril, at least much fatigue; and, taking the ascent of the mountain into account-an indispensable part of the undertaking-no one but a sincere worshipper of Nature would have been tempted to repeat his pilgrimage to a shrine which in many places could be approached only on his hands and knees. For my part, I was at that time of an age when fatigue, and, if it can be obtained, danger, are considered very essential component parts of pleasure; and partly from admiration of the scenery, and partly from a love of adventure, which seems to be inherent in all striplings of twenty, but more especially in those of fair Scotland, I was induced, as often as leisure permitted, to make the tour of the lake, sometimes with one or two companions, and sometimes alone. If description were my forte, I should like to preserve some memorials of what Loch Lomond was ten years ago, and never will be again; but as I am not a very good painter, either with the pencil or the pen, and, at any rate, hav

ing observed that the personal adventures of travellers are generally more interesting than descriptions of their route, I shall prefer relating an incident which occurred to me on my last visit, and introduce only such scenic sketches as are necessary to explain or illustrate the subject.

In the early part of September 1817, I left Greenock in the ferry-boat for Helensburgh. The lover of fine scenery, by the way, who has not been on the middle of the Clyde at this point, has seen nothing. The rich expanse of water, six or seven miles broad-the opulent towns on the southern coast, with their spires and public buildings-and, further down, the fishing village of Gornock in its sequestered recess;-Helensburgh lining the opposite shore, which there forms an expansive bay, with its neat white houses-and the delicious peninsula of Roseneath below it, resembling a single grove ;on the west, the view shut in by distant hills, and above, the vista of the waters terminated by the gigantic rock and fortress of Dumbarton; while, in addition to these points of pictorial effect, the rich fields and sloping hills on the south side of the river, and the mountains on the north, known by the name of the Duke of Argyle's Bowling-green, that seem to have been piled on one another in some convulsion of the elements, or in the terrible sport of original Nature, offer perhaps a more splendid and imposing contrast than can be found elsewhere in the compass of a single view. But to me this was an every-day scene; and both the charms of nature and the works of man being associated on this spot with ideas of my every-day cares and studies, I was soon glad to escape from them all. Landed at Helensburgh, to scale the hills above it was the occupation of but a very little time, to one whose cares or studies had not yet destroyed the elasticity of his limbs or the buoyancy of his heart, and I speedily found myself shut out from the Clyde, from home, and from all familiar objects, whether of liking or loathing, and stretching steadily onwards, far and free, towards the mountains. I arrived at the Loch in due time, without having experienced any farther inconvenience from the journey than a commotion in the inner man, occasioned by the powers of the stomach demanding tumultuously, long before the usual time, their daily rations, on pretence of the keen air and bracing exercise of the walk; but, on crossing the water to the inn at the bottom of the mountain, I soon set this matter to rights in a very satisfactory manner to all parties, and proceeded on my travels. My intention was, in the first place, to climb Ben Lomond, and enjoy, at my leisure, the splendid view from the summit; and then, descending in another direction, to sweep in an easterly course along the side of the lake, but still on the hills; and conclude the day by witnessing, from an eminence about three miles distant, the most delightful spectacle scene-hunter ever beheld-Loch Lomond, sleeping in the arms of her hundred hills, by the light of a September The first part of my plan I accomplished with tolerable facility, my only guide being memory, and my only staff a little flask of the mountaindew. Landscape-painting-with the pen-is one of the most thankless offices that can be undertaken by an author. However forcibly the scene may be impressed on his own imagination at the instant of writing, and however daintily that tricksy spirit, his goose-quill, may perform his bidding, he will find it absolutely impossible to convey the idea he wishes to the mind of another. It is impracticable to copy with the pencil from the pen; the imagination, addressed by the latter, can only seize the general character of the picture, but the details must be made up from the scattered fragments of memory. It would be as curious, were it possible, to trace these fragments to the source from whence they were derived, as is the scene in the picture of the resurrection, where legs and arms and heads are flying from different quarters of the canvass to join the body. After sitting for a little while, I felt more fatigue than I was sensible of before; and my limbs, thus suddenly thrown into a state of quiescence, as if relishing the change, began to show symptoms of a disinclination to return to their former suppleness. A languor approaching to drowsiness is the usual companion to this stiffening of the muscles after much fatigue ; and under the lee of a rock, which

moon.