In 1550, as a morning meal, the maids of honour of Queen Elizabeth began the day with a round of beef, or a red herring and a flagon of ale.

Time was, a sober Englishman would knock
His servants up, and rise by five o'clock.

POPE:

But now, A.D. 1830,

The gentleman who dines the latest,
Is, in our street, esteemed the greatest:
But surely greater than them all

Is he who never dines at all.

Resuming, however, the thread of our story, we hesitate not to say, that as well might general rules be laid down for a man to travel by, as to think of regulating diet by plans or systems. These could never be made generally applicable; the remedy, therefore, would doubtless be worse than the disease. And the man who will not eat when he is hungry, but waits an hour longer for a dinner or any other meal, deserves to lose his appetite for his pains.

Relative to the quantity of food a man ought to take at one time, this, for the most part, will be regulated by the appetite, which cloys in proportion as the containing medium fills; and the man who neither knows nor cares when he has eaten enough, will be little benefited by any instruction. The quality of the food will also be considerably regulated by the appetite, and the means of procuring one description of aliment in preference to another; not forgetting the facility or difficulty

with which it may be obtained. The mode of preparing food will, in like manner, depend as much on convenience as upon taste. But the most difficult and perplexing circumstance frequently connected with the process of digestion, is the means of procuring any quantity or quality of food at all. This is the grand consideration with the majority of people; and to those in good health, there are no rules equal to those of old dame Nature, namely—eat, drink, and sleep, as she dictates, if you have the means; provided and always, as the lawmen would say, nothing very particular interposes between these restorative means and her cravings. A healthy stomach, indeed, so far from submitting to rules, would spurn them with contempt.* To talk about the digestive organs of a man in health, digesting this or that substance, we smile at such ridiculous notions. The healthy stomach knows few or no distinctions; and, with the exception of the duration of the process, which is the only difference, it is as capable of digesting a piece of oil cloth or a cobler's lapstone, as comparatively easy as a rump-steak or a mutton-chop.

A debilitated or morbid state of the digestive organs, local or general, in consequence of habitual or long continued intemperance, may diminish the powers of the stomach considerably below the healthy standard; so much so, at least, as to require some little nicety in the selection and preparation of food; but the man of health must be more or less a gourmand who diverges beyond

*See Dr. Stevenson on Nervous Diseasès, &c.

the simple scientific mode of cookery, in the gratification of his palate, or in the choice of his nutriment.

It is observed by Arbuthnot, that the diet of a human creature, full grown, and in the state of manhood, ought to be solid, with a sufficient degree of tenacity, without acrimony, their chief drink cold water; because in such a state, it has its own natural spirit and air (which heat destroys), with a quantity of fermented liquor, proportioned to their natural constitutions. The solidity, quantity, and strength of the aliment, is to be proportioned to the labour or quantity of muscular motion, which, in youth, is greater than at any other age; on which account, a strong and solid diet would seem to be indicated. But, as their age is still in a state of accretion, the diet ought still to be emollient and relaxing, copious and without acrimony. Infancy and childhood demand such copious nourishing aliment, as lengthens their fibres without breaking or hardening, because of their weakness and state of accretion. Milk has all these qualities.

To be brief, as regards the subject of eating and drinking, two of the most grateful occupations when under proper regulations, that quality of it is, generally speaking, the best and most conducive to health, which is most simple, purest, and most free from irritating properties; as well as that which approaches nearest to the nature of our bodies when in a state of health, or which admits of being more easily converted or assimilated into their substances by the powers of life, after it has been duly prepared by the art of cookery

although, at times, it is even superfluous to be over nice on this point. As regards the food of man, or animals generally, there is every reason to suppose, that there is scarcely a substance, animal, vegetable, or mineral, that does not, in some manner or other, contain the basis of some nutritive matter.

It is observed by Dr. Heberden, that "physicians appear to be too strict and particular in their rules of diet and regimen; too anxious attention to those rules hath often hurt those who were well, and added unnecessarily to the distresses of the sick. Whether meat should be boiled or roasted, or dressed in any other plain way, and what sort of vegetables should be eaten with it, I never yet met with any person of common sense (except in an acute illness) whom I did not think much fitter to choose for himself than I was to determine for him.*

"When the stomach is weak, it seems particularly necesssary that our food should be nutritive and easy of digestion. It may be further observed, that its qualities should be adapted to the feelings of the stomach.†

"In proof of this proposition, numerous instances might be mentioned of apparently unfit substances agreeing with the stomach, merely because they were suitable to its feelings. Instances might also be mentioned of changes in diet producing a tranquil and

* See Heberden on Diet. + Abernethy, Surg. Obs. p. 68.

healthy state of stomach, in cases where medicines had been tried in vain."

In fact, settled plans of diet, either in health or disease, we hold to be mere chimera. It is rare that two persons are found under the same constitutional or casual circumstances, as regards either health or disease. On this subject, therefore, it will be found, if we take into consideration the nature as well as the methodus of feeding, custom considerably detracts from the injuries which are stated to arise from certain deviations in the quality of our aliment, and its intemperate or unseasonable use; it being well known that eatable things, which people have been long accustomed to, however pernicious they may be in themselves, become, from use, less offensive, and lose a portion of their noxious effects. Were this, indeed, not the case, it would be one of the greatest miseries to live according to the strict rules of physics; much more so, in compliance with the ridiculous injunctions of presumptive quackery. Nature, in fact, is herself changed by custom. Husbandmen and those habituated to laborious lives, eat with eager appetite, “fat and rusty bacon," coarse salt meats, black bread and cheese as insipid and hard as flint stone, and thrive under this, and even coarser fare, which the children of competence, or rather of indolence, would scornfully reject. "Custom," in fine, "is all in all," and matters that would be delicious to some, are delightful to others. This natural, nay exquisite sensation, is frequently experienced by travel