seasoned, and with the assistance of rare Burgundy,

has been excelled by our native luxury, an hundred squab turkeys being not unfrequently deposited in one pie in the bishopric of Durham.

"The bishop stow, pontific luxury,

An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie."-Dunciad. But a more extraordinary pie was produced in the reign of Charles the first, when Jeffery Hudson, the dwarf, was served up to table in a cold pie, at Burleigh on the Hill, the seat of the Duke of Buckingham; and as soon as he made his appearance, was presented by the Duchess to the Queen, who retained him in her service. He was then seven or eight years of age, and but eighteen inches high, and grew no taller till after he was thirty, when he shot up to three feet nine inches. The king's gigantic porter once drew him out of his pocket, in a mask at court, to the great surprise of all present.

Dr. King. in his Art of Cookery, thus alludes to the Dwarf pie, and also to another joke often practised, of serving up a living hare in a pie:

"Let never fresh machines your pastry try,

Unless grandees or magistrates are by;

Then you may put a dwarf into a pie.

Or if you'd fright an alderman and mayor,

Within a pasty lodge a living hare.

Then midst their gravest furs, shall mirth arise,

And all the guild pursue with joyful cries!

A few words will finish the remarkable history of Hudson. Soon after the breaking out of the great rebellion he was made a captain in the royal army; in 1664 he attended the Queen to France, where he fought a duel with Mr. Crofts with pistols, on horseback, and killed his antagonist at the first fire. After the Restoration, he was imprisoned in the Gatehouse, on suspicion of being concerned in the Popish plot, and died in his sixty-third year, in confinement. It was, perhaps, in allusion to Hudson that Pope said, when he

went down well. There is in Leuwenhoak, a better argument than any which the Council of Trent could think of, to shew that birds in some degree participate of the nature of fish, although their blood is hot, viz. that the globules of the blood of birds as well as fish are oval; this however, applies to all kinds of birds, and in time perhaps those gentlemen may comprehend them all under the denomination of fish.f

As to the meat in France the best mutton and beef

himself went armed with pistols, that with pistols the smallest man in the kingdom was a match for the largest,

"On the food of the French during Lent, Sterne has a very humorous passage which he calls "Frogs newly classed."

Comment, Monsieur, mangez la viande Vendredi Saint? What, Sir, eat meat on Good Friday?

I should have no objection to fish, for that matter, if there were any good; carp and tench I have been surfeited with this Lent; and as to your morue, it can be equalled by nothing but the black broth of the ancients.

Mais, il y a d'autres especes de poisson; que pensez vous des anguilles, et des grenouilles ?

But there are other kinds of fish, what think you of eels and frogs? Frogs! ha! ha! ha! Excuse me for laughing. This is the first time I ever heard them classed under the head of fish.

Comment! la grenouille c'est bien du poisson, et elle est permise.

How! surely frogs are very good fish, and they are allowed.

They may be allowed; and in this case I should think the penance very rigid, if I were compelled to eat them, though you were to call them wild-fowl.-A frog-feast to an Englishman, is a very severe fast.-Sent. Journey, 206.

may be as good as ours, but certainly does not excel it; their veal is inferior, being coarse and red. Of this sort of food, no people in Europe understand the management like the English. This superiority was once peculiar to Essex, but it is now generally known that nothing so much contributes to the whiteness and tenderness of the flesh of calves, as frequent bleeding, and giving them abundance of meal and milk. By large and repeated bleeding, the red cake of the blood is exhausted, and the vessels are filled with colourless serum; the cramming of poultry, produces a similar effect, and converts the blood into chyle; and the livers of geese, fed in this manner, attain a vast size, and become white and very delicious.

The French labour under a great prejudice against the meat of England, which they say will not make soup by one third part so strong as their own. It certainly will not make it so salt, and savoury, and strong to the taste; this however, is less owing to the goodness of their meat, which is leaner and drier than ours, than to their keeping it a long time before they use it; by this method a higher flavour and salter taste are imparted, for as meat decays it becomes more salt. Now the English by custom covet the freshest meat, and cannot endure the least tendency to putrefaction; one reason of which is, that our air, being far more moist than theirs, often causes mustiness in meat that is hung, which is intolerable to all mankind; whereas the dry air of France at once improves the taste of meat, and makes it more tender. So that if we could in hanging our meat secure it from mustiness, it would far outdo the French meat, because it

is so much more juicy than that. There were only two sorts of animal food that exceeded what we have in England, viz. the wild pig, and the red legged partridge. These last, though small, far excel the gray sort.

As for the fruits, our residence in France, which was from December to Midsummer, was at the worst time of the year, so that we had none but winter fruits. We had some bonne chrestienes, which, though somewhat freer from stones than those in England, were scarcely better tasted. The Vergoleuse pear was admirable, but to our regret this sort was exhausted soon after our arrival. The Kentish pippin was in great perfection here, but the markets were chiefly supplied with two sorts of apples, viz. the calvile, or winter-queenning, which though soft and tender, continued good till after Easter; and the pome apis, which serves more for show than use. It is a small, flat apple, and very beautiful, being on one side quite red, and very pale or white on the other, and may well serve ladies at their toilettes for a pattern to paint by. This apple is, however, not contemptible after Whitsuntide, and which is its peculiar property, it never smells ill if carried about the person.

In their sweetmeats I met with nothing worth mentioning, except a marmalade of orange flowers, which was admirable. It was made with those flowers, the juice of oranges, and fine sugar.

CHAP. VIII.

OF THE WINES AND OTHER LIQUORS MADE USE OF AT PARIS.

THE wines in and around this metropolis, though somewhat weak, are good in their kind; those de Surane are in some years excellent; but in all the taverns it is the prevailing practice to make all the kinds of wine resemble champaigne and burgundy. The tax upon wine is now so great, that the same wine which, before the war, was retailed at five pence, now costs more than fifteen pence the quart. This has enhanced the price of all commodities, as well as the wages of servants and labourers, and has caused thousands of private families to lay in wines in their cellars at the cheapest hand, even those who were not used to keep wine.

The wines of Burgundy and Champaigne are justly the most valued, for they are light and easy on the stomach; and if they are kept in draught, or even bottled, provided the corks, according to the custom in France, are but loosely put in, seldom affect the