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"Men of erudition, who still attribute the importation of turkies to the Jesuits, offer as a proof which they consider unanswerable, that in several provinces of France the word Jesuit still signifies a turkey. The fact is that in some remote districts, people invite their friends thus :— ! Come and dine with me, you shall get a fat crammed Jesuit.' Thus follows the conversation-'I'll trouble you, sir, for a little of that Jesuit?

Pray, sir, do you find that Jesuit tough or tender?'-' If you please, I will carve this Jesuit.' People do not now say a Jesuit truffé, but you may say a 'Jesuit en capilotade,' or a Jesuit au feu d'enfer'"

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"There are still many men in the world who are afraid to sit thirteen at table, were it ever so exquisitely furnished. I know even some freethinkers, who had rather die of hunger at the side of such a table, than run the risk of dying in any other manner during the course of the year by sitting down to it.

"A friend of humanity, a philanthropic gastronomer, who is domiciled in a small town where this superstition of thirteen is in full force, has just sent a circular to all householders in the following terms:

"Sir, (or Madam,)

"Nature has favoured me with a stomach of such capacity, as to enable me to be ready for the table at any hour of the day. My appearance is genteel, and my corpulence tolerable. I possess a collection of anecdotes, songs, and impromptus, which give me the power of sustaining the conversation when it languishes, of singing at the end of a repast, and of improvizing a holiday compliment. I carve, and do the honours of the table in capital style. I am never particular, except when I am set at table between a prating old woman and a voracious child, or when my back is to a door which is continually shutting and opening, I have sufficient experience not to meddle with a dish which the mistress is keeping for the next day, on which point my discretion is known since the time of the continental blockade, an epoch, during which nobody ever saw me take either sugar or coffee.

"These, I think, are qualities sufficient to make a man figure usefully at a table where people object to dine with thirteen. You, Sir, (or Madam,) will no doubt think it better to let an honest man live, than to run the disagreeable chance of dying yourself in the course of the year. Do not fear, therefore, that you need ever have thirteen at your table, for I shall always be ready to make the number fourteen. I have the honour to be, &c.'

"Charles VI. by an edict of 1420, prohibited that any thing more than two dishes and a soup should be served at dinner. Charles VI. died mad."

"Marshal de Mouchy contended that pigeon had a consoling power. When he had lost a friend or relation, he used to say to his cook, Have roast pigeons to-day for dinner. I perceive that when I have eaten a couple of pigeons, my grief is considerably diminished.'"

"The mushroom has really had a whimsical destiny; it has been praised and abused with equal injustice. Nero called it the Flesh of the Gods. A grave confessor has given it the epithet of the assassin and regicide vegetable. In fact, it has killed Tiberius, Claudius, the wife and children of Euripides, Clement VII. Charles VI. the widow of the Czar Alexis, &c. &c."

"Champagne apparently is a great favourite of crowned heads. There are in the territory of Ai, four small clos, which belonged at once to four Sovereigns,-Francis I. Leo X. Charles V. and Henry VIII. These little Bacchine territories remained in peace, while their princes were disputing with arms in their hands, about some paltry corner of the earth."

Our author is not an Anglomane. Douglas, patissier de Londres, of the Rue Rivoli, is very much disparaged; his oyster patés declared fit only for the English, and his gingerber, as it is here called, brought into very contemptuous opposition to Champagne. And we are very gravely told, that

"The art of giving dinners is still in its infancy in most countries of Europe. In England, the grandest dinners are composed of roast beef, steamed potatoes, fish boiled in salt water, and pudding. Coffee is very rare. You cannot find six establishments in London where you can drink this liquor, and there is scarcely one passable restaurateur. Yet the English pretend to be the most civilized people in the world!"

The description of the dinner very sufficiently decides what class of company the writer kept when here. In point of fact, (and we appeal to M. Ude, a most competent judge,) we assert, in spite of all the outcry of the French, that the art of cookery in London not only equals, but far transcends that of Paris, and in all the "appliances and means to boot" that a good dinner requires, we are a century before them. But as their gentlemen think proper to live in coffee-houses, and ours do not, it is no wonder that the restaurateur of Paris should transcend his brother of London. And yet we should not be afraid to back the Clarendon and the Albion against the best of their rivals in the fair land of France. Between our clubs and the French restaurateurs there could be no regular competition, the latter being immeasurably inferior, and yet it is between them that the comparison should be most fairly instituted.

The "Directeur des Estomacs" is a paltry book on diet, devoid of science, knowledge of medicine, or wit. En passant, we perceive in it the information that cyder fortifies the heart. This we own was rather new to us.

VOL. I. NO. I.

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ART. VII-Discours sur les Améliorations Progressives_de_la Santé Publique par l'influence de la Civilisation. Par F. Berard, 8vo. Paris. 1826. pp. 120.

THERE is a natural proneness in the human mind to magnify the past, and to look back upon the years which have been already numbered as those which have witnessed the best and the happiest moments of existence. Amid the anxieties and troubles of manhood we turn to our childish days, and forget all our little circles of miseries, in the remembrance of hours which were passed in innocence and joy. As old age creeps on, and robs the frame day by day of some remnant of its former vigour; when the ear becomes dull to the voices which are babbling near, and the eye dim to the forms which surround it, the mind is busied with the memory of past hours, and holds communion with those who had been the companions of our infancy, and the friends of our maturer years. The extension of the same principle which carries us back with such delight to the beginning of our own career, by a natural transition connects the commencement of society with a similar delusion. Hence the remotest ages have always referred to another and a happier time, when man had not the weak frame and lax virtues of "these degenerate days." That we should feel so is more pardonable than that we should think so, and yet illustrious names are not wanting to sanction the dogma, that civilization is a curse; that it creates greater wants, arouses viler passions, annihilates the natural equality of man, enervates his body, and vitiates his mind. They have figured the infant state of society to themselves as that in which man had few desires, and nature many gifts; where crime was unknown, for refinement did not exist: nay, one of the most strenuous advocates of these doctrines (Rousseau) has asserted that a reasoning man is a depraved animal.

By him and others of a similar opinion, it has been taken for granted, that the social feeling is acquired, and that men congregate from reflection, or from chance; whereas the fact is, that it is instinctive-an imperative law of nature-and that man is no less under its influence than the bee or the ant. Indeed it may be boldly asserted, that there was no time in which men existed in a state of nature, as it is termed, isolated, and far from fellow men. That the social feeling is independent of reason, and anterior to all knowledge and habit, is a fact which is easily proved from the analogy of animals. In these this instinct is often strongest where there is the least intellect, as, for example, in many tribes of insects; nor does habit, or the influence of the parent on the offspring, generate it. If this were the case, it would be equally

strong in the bear as in the dog, for the one nourishes its cub as long and as tenderly as the other, and yet the bear is essentially a solitary animal. The young stag is for several years a social animal, living in herds, but at the age of puberty the instinct becomes obliterated, and for the rest of his life he remains solitary, affording another example of the insufficiency of habit to raise the social instinct.

In those animals in which the law of force is the principal one of their nature, as in the feline species, the social instinct is also transitory. The male and female repair to the same cave, and the dam defends her offspring at the risk of her own life; these repay her affection, and are obedient to her commands: but no sooner is the secretion of milk at an end, than every trace of the instinct for society is lost, and each seeks a solitude for itself; the weak fly from the strong, and the most powerful drives the more feeble from its prey or its haunts.

A higher, though still a limited grade of sociability, is to be found in the roebuck. When a male and female are once united, they continue so for the rest of their lives; they partake the same retreat, feed on the same pasture, share the same dangers, and enjoy the same fortune; and should one chance to perish, the survivor in a very short time pines to death, unless it meet with a companion of a different sex to its own, and equally solitary as itself.-(Fred. Cuvier, Ann. des Sciences Nat. vol. vi.)

Where the social instinct is more developed, and numerous families congregate together, new qualities arise with new relations: there is a spirit of subordination; the young soon learn what they can do, and what they cannot; an habitual deference is paid to the oldest. These, if the tribe be predacious, satisfy their hunger first, and the residue, if any, is left for the younger. Combats take place only among those of nearly the same age. Such are the ordinary effects of the higher grades of the social instinct; but they are often varied by the character of the individual. One shall be more obstinate, strong, or ferocious; another more timid: the latter yields, the former obtains an ascendancy in the society, and that being once established, is always retained, and no intestinal commotion ever occurs to destroy that instinct which binds and keeps them together. Thus then we see that the natural effect of the social instinct in animals is to produce results similar (though of course infinitely more limited) to those which we observe in man, proving therefore that the cause is the same in both, and if instinctive in the one, no less so in the other.

The action of this natural force upon such different materials as the limited faculties of brutes and the illimitable reason of man, must necessarily work very different results. Hence the very na

ture of the latter presupposes progression in civilization, and as civilization is progressive, so man becomes progressively ameliorated. They, therefore, who advocate the doctrine that civilization is a curse, are guilty of the assertion that man is the only being in the universe who becomes less perfect in the progress of his developement. The seed expands itself into perfection, the tree is stronger than the plant, the embryo attains to its full and fair proportions, and the animal is more perfect than the germ. The spirit which is in each fulfils the final cause of its existence only when it has expanded organization to the utmost of its nature. These things are in the womb of time. But man, to whose spirit there is no conceivable limitation, he alone, in sooth, is deteriorated by causes which develope both the moral and physical forces of the species! By himself man is the weakest, when united with his fellows the strongest, of animals. His long and puling infancy; his naked, unarmed frame, in which neither strength nor swiftness are to be found; all his physical wants prove that society is as necessary for his very existence, as the air or the light for that of the humblest flower.

"The social union produces this admirable result; it gives to each the faculties of all, to the weak the power of the strong, to feeble childhood and infirm old age the succours of vigorous manhood; feminine grace is supported by the energy of man; nay, the living are united with the dead! and nothing which is useful to the species ever can become the prey of time. Names, indeed, may perish, but things remain. The human species, as a whole, may be looked upon as an individual gradually acquiring immense force, and becoming more and more perfect in the succession of ages."—p. 13.

Whenever we find man near that state of nature which is so largely expatiated on, and so ardently desired, in the dreams of Rousseau and Monboddo, we invariably observe him surrounded by circumstances unfavourable to existence, and debased in mind while he is weakened in frame. If we turn to the relation of any newly discovered country, we find that the face of the land is darkened by immense tracts of forest; large masses of water stagnate on the earth, the very air is filled with noxious and pestilent vapours, ferocious and venomous animals abound, and the poor savage, in his boasted state of nature, is like a straw in the whirlpool; the want of means to combat against the evils which surround him never fails to weaken the vital forces, so that longevity amid savage nations is not only rare, but savages in general are more feeble than civilized nations. Le Père Fauque, who lived much among them, says he scarcely saw an old man; Raynal asserts the same of the savages of Canada; Cook and La Perouse of those of the north-west coast of America; Mungo Park of the

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