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book or any other other subject you may possibly quarrel, but respecting that of one on the science of the stomach, all men are agreed, and the matter is so fascinating that it rises above, and conceals the taste and scholarship of the author-or, which is far better, it renders both taste and scholarship unnecessary. We suppose that that this is the reason why, in this country at least, works treating of cookery have always been remarkable for the clumsiness of their language, and their want of connexion with other matters which might at first sight appear to be partially related to them. It is true that in matters of fact some of them have been copious enough, and the more knowing have ever loved to begin at the beginning,-as for instance, Mrs. Glass, who commences her lectures on hare soup fricasee, with the words, "First catch a hare," without which operation all that follows would of course be of no use. That learned lady does not, indeed, mention how the hare is to be caught, or the game laws to be avoided in case you are an unqualified person; and this we rather regret. Nor do we confine our regret to the single subject of the hare; for in all the choice dishes, with the descriptions of which the Apician Literati make our chops water while our hearts are sad, we desiderate the means of getting at the materials; and we think that one book pointing out how every body may get what they desire in the way of eating would be of more real service to the community than all the manuals on cooking that were ever written. Still anecdotical works on gourmandise, however unskilfully they may be cooked, or how many hundreds of times they may have been returned to the hash-pan, are pretty sure to find readers.

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APICIAN MORSELS

Put us very much in mind of that saying in Shakspeare, that the learned man had been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps." Not that we think Humelbergius Secundus is very guilty of language stealing, inasmuch as he says that Le poule d'Inde, which every body knows to be a turkey, "is in fact a guinea hen." His small larceny rather consists in having stolen the scraps of books; so far as we are learned on the subject, there is not an original line in his volume, neither is there any thing in it which has not been better told over and over again. Therefore we would strenuously recommend our readers to take their dinners, leave the Apician Morsels alone; and if the author cannot dine in any other way upon his book, we would advise him to eat a copy every day with Reviewer's sauce, until the whole impression be exhausted. Upon certain occasions we have no objection to a devilled fowl, even though that were "Le poule d'Inde," and "in fact a guinea hen;" but we enter our protest against a devilled book, whatever may be the subject.

'UDE'S FRENCH COOK,' THE TENTH EDITION,

Is a very different affair. This is a real work of genius, full of poetry and philosophy, and all the other agrémens of life. "On the Rise and Progress of Cookery "—is most amusing-infinitely more interesting than Montesquieu on the Rise of the Romans. What chapter in the History of Inventions can furnish anything half so good as the following :—

At length, Gonthier appeared, to raise the culinary edifice, as Descartes, a century after him, raised that of philosophy. Both introduced doubt-the one in the moral, the other in the physical world. Descartes, considering our conscience as the point from which every philosophical inquiry ought to begin, regenerated the understanding, and destroyed that unintelligible empiricism, which was the bane of human reason. Gonthier, establishing the nervous glands as the sovereign judges at table, overturned the whole scaffolding of bromatological traditions, the sad inheritance of past ages. Gonthier is the father of cookery, as Descartes of French philosophy. If the latter has given rise to geniuses, like Spinosa, Mallebranche, and Locke; the former has been followed by a posterity of artists, whose names and talents will never be forgotten. Who has not heard of d'Alégre, Souvent, Richant, and Mézelier? It is said that Gonthier, in less than ten years, invented seven cullises, nine ragouts, thirty-one sauces, and twenty-one soups; but who can assert that Descartes has discovered as many facts? In the history of Gonthier, every page should be read; but could we say as much for an historian or a novelist ?

And then of sauces, England is a great country, but not in all things:

It is very remarkable, that in France, where there is but one religion, the sauces are infinitely varied, whilst in England, where the different sects are innumerable, there is, we may say, but one single sauce. Melted butter, in English cookery, plays nearly the same part as the Lord Mayor's coach at civic ceremonies, calomel, in modern medicine, or silver forks in the fashionable novels, Melted butter and anchovies, melted butter and capers, melted butter and parsley, melted butter and eggs, and melted butter for ever: this is a sample of the national cookery of this country. A sauce, made according to the principles of the art, excites and restores the appetite, flatters the palate, is pleasing to the smell, and inebriates all the senses with delight. We have often heard a noble patron, whose taste on the subject is indisputable, assert that sauces are to food what action is to oratory. We would bow to a famous sauce-maker, as we would have done to Lord Byron or Sir Walter Scott; and amongst the proofs of the immate riality of the soul, at the very first line, we place "the prodigy of a perfectly well-made sauce." He was in the right: perhaps the wisdom and fertility of nature are not displayed with more splendour in the works of the creation, than is the genius of the cook in the composition of a sauce. Omnis pulchritudinis forma unitas est, said St, Augustine; therefore there must be unity in every good sauce,-there is a harmony of taste as well as of colours and sounds. If it were not so, why should the organ of taste be wounded by one composition, and so agreeably flattered by another. Thence it follows, that more sagacity and taste are requisite than we are generally willing to allow. To appreciate a sauce, a delicate palate is as necessary to these kinds of cooks, as a refined ear to a musician. Father Castel wanted only nine scientific eyes to feel the harmony of his colours; and a skilful saucemaker requires only an experienced palate, to taste the harmony of the flayours of his ragouts,

Ude's directions for suppers are the best things we have seen for a long time. How often has an unhappy young lady fainted at a ball, because there was on the supper-table plenty of confectionery architecture, but nothing satisfactory to the palate :

My plan for a ball is to ornament the sideboard with a basket of fruit, instead of insignificant pieces of pastry, which are at once expensive in making, and objects of ridicule to the connoisseur. Place in their stead, things that can be eaten, such as jelly, plates of mixed pastry, and sandwiches of a superior kind; and if the founder of the feast be great and generous, avail yourself of his generosity, and make excellent articles.

This is indeed sense.

Ude and Jarrin, the Cook, and the Confectioner, ought to go together. Jarrin is not as philosophical as the great artist whom we have quoted; but he is an admirable ally. The two books must be in every house where the science is properly valued.

From cookery to grammar (a sort of philological hash) the transition is not difficult.

We have just seen the new Dictionary of French Verbs by M. Tarver, French master at Eton. The merits of this gentleman in promoting and assisting the studies of the English youth in his particular department we have already noticed. He is an industrious, intelligent, useful, yet unpretending labourer in the great vineyard of education; he is not a routinier, he analyzes what he teaches, and finds out new and straighter paths to information. This present work has several important features that distinguish it from other schoolbooks. The verbs are arranged in alphabetical order; to the infinitive of each, are added the termination of the participles, the various cases which it governs, the prepositions it is used with, and examples of each construction in which such a verb can be employed and given, as well as the idioms and familiar phrases. The introduction tothe work is of itself very valuable. It consists chiefly of tables of the different parts of speech, such as adjectives, pronouns, irregular verbs, adverbs, &c., with all their accidents, in a concise and clear form. In short, the work is single of its kind, and its plan might be usefully imitated in other languages. It is a book that no French teacher or pupil ought to be without.

The weather has been so vile this Easter, that most of our fair and fat friends will have thought more of dining, than of walking in green lanes. But they are returned to town. Fashion, with all its train of gaieties, doth again bless our region with its presence; and with it the court, the cuckoo, and the swallow are also come, or coming. The 'absorbing question,' moreover, hath gone to its last account-the April moon, too, with her tearful sympathy for the unfortunate ascendancy-men, hath waned at length (we anticipate but a day or two).— The drawing-room, blessed be the Lord Chamberlain, hath wound up and set in motion the machine which an unusual abstraction had allowed to run down. The necessity of decorating the person has called to mind the propriety of seeking ornaments for the mind-that the one be as flimsy as the other alters not the fact-the modists cease to complain of want of customers for their elegancies; publishers hug themselves in the idea that the reading spirit is reviving, and THE EXHIBITIONS begin to be thronged, and to breathe an air of haut-ton, exciting new hopes of patronage and purchasers in our lately desponding artists. We will go and see the exhibitions.

THE SUFFOLK STREET GALLERY.

THERE is only one fault to find with the Society of British Artists, and that is, that they were too ambitious in their infancy, and built them too large a palace. Their exhibition-rooms in fact are too spacious; and hence in order to cover their walls, a number of paintings are

admitted which are far from doing credit to the national progress in taste or execution; and which, a far greater evil, give a tone of commonness to the exhibition, and throw a disrepute on the gallery itself, if not on the more deserving works which are found in such indifferent company. This is a complaint, however, that we will not pursue; the collection contains abundance of productions that are worthy of praise, and with these it is that we propose principally to concern ourselves.

The two scene-painters, Mr. Stanfield and Mr. Roberts, bear away the palm. "The Departure of the Israelites out of Egypt," by the latter, and "Earle Stoke Park, near Devizes, the seat of G. W. Taylor, Esq." by the former, are the two lions of the exhibition. Against the performance of Mr. Roberts it has been objected-or rather the observation has been made on it-that it is too much in imitation of Mr. Martin. For ourselves we do not subscribe to this opinion. We entertain a high admiration for the talents of Mr. Martin. Beholding in him at once the popular painter, the author of the magnificent project for the aqueduct from Denham Lock to the Metropolis, the inventor of the ingenious plan, mentioned in another part of our number, for erecting lighthouses on the shoals of our dangerous coast, can we refuse to regard him as the Da Vinci of his age? as equal to the Italian painter and hydraulist, in the same proportion in which our times approach in grandeur and originality to those in which the founder of the Milanese school flourished? Still we have never contemplated the works in painting of Mr. Martin, without feeling a drawback on our disposition to applaud. The air of sublimity thrown into his architectural masses, and distances, and rude rocks, and dreary wilds, into his sweeping whirlwinds, his storms, and thunder, his lightning-bolts and conflagrations, his light and shade, we have ever acknowledged; but the nice minuteness of his handling in representing his myriads of created beings, however much we may have wondered at the diligence of the industrious man, we have never brought ourselves to admire, still less have we relished his false and gorgeous colouring. Now, Mr. Roberts's painting, "The Departure of the Israelites," no less in the principal effect than in the detail of the execution, is wholly different from any work of Mr. Martin. It does not even aspire to the grandeur of conception that distinguishes the productions of that artist, but then its treatment is much more true and artist-like. Considering the "Departure of the Israelites" by itself, it deserves the praise of a very clever and effective picture, admirably drawn and cleverly painted, although, in parts,-we allude to the figures in the foreground more especially,-appearing to be left unfinished. The composition is extravagant, and partakes of charlatanism. It affords no excuse for this fault that Mr. Roberts is a scene-painter; let him make such designs as these for the theatre well and good-they may suit a stage in itself corrupt, and may there be termed magnificent; but would he take his rank in a higher school of art, as he is well entitled to do-survive his age-he must confine his inventions within the bounds of sober propriety. This, in fact, is the prerogative and the token of true genius—to soar boldly, but within the atmosphere of nature. ·

Mr. Stanfield's "Earle Stoke Park" has caused fewer mouths to gape with wonder, than the Egyptian scene of Mr. Roberts, but it has not given less satisfaction to the admirers of artist-like treatment. The landscape is delightful-the effects are varied and powerful, but true to nature: a dark thunder-cloud is passing over one part of the rich and expansive prospect, while other parts appear the brighter under the gleam of a partial sunshine. The foreground also is clever ; but perhaps it may be conceded, that in this important feature of the painting an agreeable effect has been a little too much sacrificed, to give an increase of force to the rest of the picture. Mr. Stanfield's "Coast Scene," No. 36, is a delightful performance of smaller dimensions; rich, and harmonious, and full of effect.

Perhaps no pictures in this exhibition, not even the works we have already noticed, have drawn to them more general attention, or been more universally and deservedly approved, than the three small Paintings by Mr. W. Pool, No, 30, "Far from Home," and No. 124, and No. 137, "Studies from a Mulatto Girl." The expression and sentiment in these heads are truly charming.

Mr. Glover is, as usual, a bountiful contributor to this exhibition. His principal work, in point of size at least, is "Daphnis and Chloe," in an Italian landscape-a performance as pretty and as affected as the title. "The View in the Alps," No. 5, although stamped with Mr. Glover's manner, has a grand and beautiful effect of illumination by nearly horizontal sunbeams.

Mr. Lonsdale's Portrait of "R. Mott, Esq." is the best picture of this class in the exhibition-such a preference is not saying much, it is true; for the portraits in general are, as usual, vile trash. There are a hardness and flinty effect, even about this picture—and in the portrait of the "Hon. A. C. Murray," by the same artist, these defects are still more glaring-which make it doubtful whether its claim to praise does not mainly rest on the low degree of merit of the productions with which it has to compete,

Mr. R. B. Davis makes a conspicuous figure in the present exhibition, by his numerous and clever "Animal Pictures." These are chiefly portraits of horses and jockeys, and grooms, in which it must be observed, that Mr. Davis has been more successful in portraying the horses than the riders. The former are drawn to the life. The principal of Mr. Davis's productions, however in variety, and merit no less than in size, is "Foxhounds just found and getting together," No. 113, a very spirited performance: the character of the hounds is given with great truth; and as they bound along, nose to the ground, they appear actually in motion.

The "Portrait of H. R. H. the Duke of Clarence," by H. E. Dawe, is well known as a composition by the engraving taken from it, and is to be seen in the window of every print-shop. It is more distinguished for smoothness and high finish, than for spirited effect. It is a strong resemblance, and a gentlemanly portrait.

Mr. Inskipp has two small pictures which deserve to be termed clever. The "Narration," No. 180, and the " Portrait of a Lady," No. 191, merit this commendation. Seeming, however, to affect in a degree the style of Mr. Newton, they make us sensible of the ab

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