will secure, by their superior knowledge, an advantage equal to their loss. The argument would be wretchedly fallacious; but, waiving a moment the rights of individuals, it is clear the college itself must be dissolved; and therewith the study of the civil law in England will cease and determine. Now, this we should regard as an immense loss to the jurisprudence of the country. The legislative and judicial mind of England is already too much cramped by the narrow precedents of Westminster Hall. It can little afford to dispense with an occasional recurrence to the great system which was the means of civilising Europe-which forms the basis of the Scottish and ecclesiastical laws at this day-by which the jus gentium must be regulated both in our Admiralty Courts and in the discussions of our diplomatists-and in whose capacious bosom equity and common law itself were conceived and nurtured into being. The debates of Parliament, and the very tone and character of the nation, would be impaired by the sacrifice of a branch of jurisprudence which has known how to elevate a Stowell to equal honours with an Eldon. For what object, then, may we respectfully inquire, are these extensive alterations demanded? cui bono? It seems easy enough to extinguish the inferior ecclesiastical tribunals, and so abolish the grievance of an excessive number of courts, without all this change and damage. The improved and simplified process embodied in the bill might be introduced into the ecclesiastical courts, as readily as into the proposed new Court. The diocesan courts would in fact exactly answer the purposes of the proposed "District Registries," and the Prerogative Courts of Canterbury and York might be exactly what is now proposed under the name of Her Majesty's "Court of Probate.' If it be alleged that two courts are objectionable, we answer, that nothing is easier than to make the probate obtained in either province effectual in the other also; and if this be insufficient, we see no objection to abolishing altogether the testamentary jurisdiction of the Archbishop of York, so referring the whole kingdom to the one superior court at Doctors' Commons. "If it should still be urged that the judge of that court is not possessed of the public confidence, by reason of his being appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, we beg leave first to deny the fact, and secondly, to sug gest that the Archbishop might be required to submit his nomination in future for the approval of the Crown. A similar check might be imposed on the patronage of the different diocesan bishops. There would then remain absolutely nothing to distinguish be tween the proposed new court and the reformed ecclesiastical tribunal, except that the one would be called "Her Majesty's Court of Probate," and the other, as at present, the Prerogative Court of the Archbishop. That the latter as much as the former derives its jurisdiction from the Crown, and is in fact and law equally the Queen's court, we have already shown. It is no whit less the creature of the law, and not less controllable by the authority from which it sprung. We submit, then, that the cost of the proposed changes is much too great to be incurred for a mere name. These are not days to be frightened from our propriety by scarecrows which have long been stripped to the very straw. Time was when the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was full of peril to the liberties of the country. We are now perhaps verging to the opposite extreme. At all events, if these courts can be made to carry a burden for which we must otherwise purchase a new horse, why, the ani mals we possess are just as useful and as manageable as any we are likely to buy. A judgeship of £5000 a-year, with little to do, and not incapaci tated from a seat in the House of Commons, may be a very pretty thing for a solicitor-general en attendant the Great Seal; but the public and the suitors can be perfectly contented with a less splendid reform. We have to remember that, in addition to the testamentary jurisdic tion, there will still be the matrimonial and the clerical to provide for. The latter, as we have seen, will never sus tain an adequate independent establishment. If united with the matrimonial, the business would still be insufficient for even one judge. But the Government proposition is a separate court for each. A Matrimonial and Divorce Bill is in print, though not yet come under discussion, establishing another new and costly establishment, for which, in order to have something for our money, we must next find employment, by relaxing the law of marriage and affording facilities for divorce. And then there will still remain the clergy to be provided with wholesome legal correction. Surely it would be easy-nay, better, cheaper and more constitutional-to retain the three jurisdictions in the courts which have hitherto exercised them all without complaining of having too much to do. Why not let us embark on one consistent and conservative reform, instead of launching three independent barks on the tide of revolution? A subsidiary, though not unimportant, advantage attendant on the adoption of our suggestion, refers to the ultimate Court of Appeal. By the Testamentary Bill the appeal is to the House of Lords; by the Church Discipline Bill, to the Judicial Committee of Privy Council, aided by the four Archbishops and the Bishop of London. Now, until some effective measures have been adopted for the assistance of the House of Lords in their appellate jurisdiction, it would be worse than a blunder to throw upon it this additional load. The Judicial Committee, on the other hand, is declared to be a highly satisfactory tribunal, and apparently competent for additional work. Our suggestion then, in fine, is to reform the ecclesiastical courts as a whole-to extinguish all tribunals inferior to the Bishops-to give the Crown a veto on the appointment of the judges both in the provincial and in the diocesan courts-to simplify and economise the procedure-to make probate or administration, in whatever court obtained, available throughout the British dominionsto merge (if necessary) the Provincial Court of York in that of Canterbury -and having thus reduced these ancient tribunals to a uniform system, suited to the demands of the Church and the country, to continue them in the exercise of their present threefold jurisdiction, with their own proper bar, the College of Advocates, and the proctors instructing them. To devise and bring to maturity such a measure, would be a fitting employment for some great conservative luminary of the law, in a session which at present promises little else in the way of legal or constitutional reform. THE FOOD OF LONDON. WE are seriously apprehensive that "Give me the merchants of the Indian That trade in metal of the purest mould. Without control can pick his riches up, Receive them free, and sell them by the Bags of fire opals, sapphires, amethysts, As one of them, indifferently rated, To ransom great kings from captivity!" Even so is it with food. The grandest waking aspirations of Apicius or Lucullus, habituated as they were to stewed lampreys, barbels' beards, nightingales' tongues, and other approved comfitures of the Roman kitchen, must have been feeble, dull, and indistinct, compared with the visions which nightly haunt the sleep of the supperless convict. Why pity him for the scantiness of his fare, when we know that this forced abstinence has opened to him the vast realms of the world of imagination? Hears he not in his sleep the gurgling of perennial porter from pewter fountains as capacious as the springs of the Ganges, and cool as the lymph of the glacier Fancydriven by the gentle spiriting of thirst, he wanders by the margin of the brown aromatic stream, until, collecting itself for a gigantic effort, it thunders down, a glorious Niagara of stout, into a whirlpool, compared with which, the biggest vat of Barclay & Perkins is as an infant's por ringer. Ah, celestial froth-product of a million dream-pots-how pleasant seem thy whirlings in that barmy abyss to the parched palate of the sleeper! But a new phase intervenes. Hunger reasserts her prerogative, and the convict, led by Pluck, not Puck, marches along a road paved with periwinkles instead of pebbles, through an infinity of baked-potato stalls-a streaming avenue, where the savoury tripe, and the glutinous cowheel, and the bullock's liver, fit offering to the gods, mingle their meaty incense; and, in his distorted dream, he moans over the infinity of his choice. Pity him, indeed! Why, the proudest alderman of Londongladly surrender his dignity on connay, the Lord Mayor himself—would dition that he should be visited by visions such as these. Fancy a city magnate retiring to rest-or what he supposes to be rest-after one of those civic banquets of which the newspapers give us such abundant detail. After two, or it may be three, helpings of turtle, with its concomitant punch-after a huge portion of turbot-after entremets, which, like wafers, are absorbed by the enormous gullet after capon and venison and game, not to mention pies and tarts, and custards, and marrow-pudding, and whipt cream, and blanc-mange, The Food of London. By GEORGE DODD, Author of British Manufactures, &c. London: Longmans, 1856. and jellies-the whole heterogeneous mass being washed down with sherry, champagne, madeira, hock, port, and claret-how can his slumbers be light, or his visions blissful and Elysian? Haunted is he by apparitions more horrible than ever rose before the view of geologist when contemplating the ruins of an earlier world. The turtle, swallowed so late, reappears in the form of a cawana or snapping tortoise, resting its unwieldy weight upon the aldermanic chest, and epileptically struggling upwards. Saurians surround his bed: pterodactyles rattle through the curtains. Bleeding turkeys and half-executed geese gobble and hiss in his ear. Visionary pies open of their own accord, and disclose a nest of serpents. Fear transforms him into an effigy of blanc-mange, and he dreams that he is smothered in custard. Thus does nature avenge the rapine of the remorseless and unconscious gormandiser! It must be acknowledged that the subject which Mr Dodd has selected for treatment is in itself stupendous, and capable of the most various illustration. We start with the fact that, in London alone, daily food must be supplied to two millions and a half of people; and this circumstance or proposition, which we shall not attempt to controvert, seems to have impressed Mr Dodd with a sensation of the profoundest awe. Led astray by his imposing rhetoric, we, for a time, considered this as something little short of a miracle; but, upon more mature reflection, our wonder has materially decreased, and we recognise in the fact nothing more than a simple statement from the census. That the people of London should be supplied with daily food, and have ample opportunity of choice, is not one whit more wonderful than that the same kind of supply should extend to Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, or even the remotest villages. If London had risen at once like a huge exhalation from the earth-if its population had descended from the skies like locusts, or sprung up, ready made and full-stomached, like the armed men from the dragon's teeth, scattered by Deucalion and Pyrrha — then, indeed, we might marvel greatly how the necessary victual could be supplied. But London is not a thing of yesterday. It has gone on augmenting and extending since the days of Julius Cæsar; and it would have been a strange thing indeed, if, with that augmentation of numbers, the supply had been stationary or had become contracted. Should London expand still further, according to the present ratio of increase, until, in 1889, it may reckon its five millions of inhabitants, Mr Dodd need not give himself the slightest uneasiness on the subject of the food of posterity. So long as the Londoners can pay a remunerative price, they, like all other people on the face of the civilised globe, will not want for victual. Aldermen will gobble then as now, and the sale of sausages be multiplied. We have heard it stated, on authority sufficiently imposing, that the markets of London are so supplied as to furnish nine millions of meals daily to the population. This must be an exaggeration. We are exceedingly unwilling to believe that every man, woman, and child, in London (sucklings excluded), devours four stated meals per day. Were that the case, apoplexy would right soon thin the population, and would figure in the bills of mortality as the prime minister of Azrael. That our friends of London have a fair twist of their own, is not unknown to us. They feed freely, but they feed well; and the fact that they feed well, is of itself a contradiction to this monstrous charge. Breakfast, luncheon, dinner-these three we can comprehend; but it is beyond reason to allow a supplementary supper. When men dine at an early hour, they seldom or never are so far left to themselves as to commit the crime of luncheon; and in their case, a light supper of oysters, broiled kidneys, welsh rabbit, or devil, may be excused. But they do not interject that skeleton of a meal which goes by the name of tea. Tea ought, indeed, to be summarily excluded from the catalogue of repasts. A cup of warm water stained with hyson, and a transparency of bread-and-butter, no thicker than a carpenter's shaving, is no more entitled to be regarded as a meal, than a bottle of soda-water. It has less nutriment in it than a pint of stout, which, in warm weather, may be blamelessly consumed throughout the day at inconsiderable intervals. But that is not a meal. Our informant, who was an alderman, must, we think, have been led astray by a fine devouring enthusiasm. Putting aside the humbler classes, who certainly do not so preposterously cram themselves, we could cite instances of famous epicures, who upon principle, and with the view of maintaining the rectitude of their appetites, rigidly restrict themselves to two meals per diem. We admire their wisdom, and approve their practice; and infinitely rather would we be sented at the board of such a man, than deposit our limbs under the mahogany of a member of the body esurient, who recklessly multiplies his repasts. In the one case we know that we shall have a good dinner in the other we anticipate kickshaws. Perpetual stuffing throughout the day is unseemly and revolting in a man, but odious and immodest in a woman. We are not of the number of those who think that the fair sex ought to subsist, like Peris, upon odours and dew. We like to see the blushing maiden beside us exhibit a certain degree of friandise, and show a healthful appetite, corresponding to the brilliant colour of her cheeks. It is a mere delusion to suppose that a ball or soiree afford the best opportunities of making love. An adroit cavalier will make more impression upon the virgin heart between soup and dessert, than he can hope to effect in fifty plunging polkas. We are a dining nation; and, at dinner, the finest qualities of the heart and intellect are instinctively exhibited. We do not like to see a young lady ignore her food, or turn from the proffered wing of chicken, albeit with an air of the prettiest disgust. That always, to us at least, engenders suspicion of previous banquets-of surreptitious luncheons of forenoon indulgences in cakes and hot jelly, it may be with a flavour of maraschino. We see at once that there is a falsity in our sweet neighbour's performance-that she is acting a part, deliberately studied and conned-and we remenber, with a shudder, the story in the Arabian Nights, of the lady who restricted herself to a few grains of rice at regulated meal-times, in order that she might be properly appetised for her hideous supper with the Ghouls. This is bad enough, but what shall we say of an undisguised voracious woman? It is frightful that such a thing should be; yet, nevertheless, we lie not when we assert its existence. Gluttony is not altogether a male sin; it can be found in the female. How often have we be held in the Park, carriages rolling by, containing enormous women, bursting with plethora, in whose rubicund countenances the awful signs of habitual hot luncheons appeared! Are they to be pitied? Yes; but their husbands are more pitiable still. For we cannot conceive anything more wretched and deplorable than the case of a man who, after his day's work in the City or at chambers, returns home with a freshened appetite, and seats himself at table with a few friends whom he proposes hospitably to entertainwhen, opposite him, the partner of his couch, the once slim and elegant Laura Matilda, sits in mute obesity, her perceptions dulled by satiety, and a sullen scorn upon her heavy lip-when Brown, and Jones, and Smith, the dearest friends of his soul, vainly assail her with Threadneedle jokes, and the last pungencies of the Exchange-when even Bosh, the wit of the Club, who has been known to extort a grin from a red-tapist, at tempts his fascinations in vain! Poor devil! what is left to the wretched husband after the disappearance of his sulky Cleopatra, rendered incapable of social converse by her meridian excesses, but to get drunk with all convenient speed, and stifle in riotous excess the consciousness of his domestic misery? "As the husband is, the wife is," said Alfred Tennyson, in the very best poem he has yet written. That is fudge. If it were so, in every case would the matrimonial unity be complete; whereas no one, surveying the circle of his own acquaintance, |