COMPARED with the profuse luxury of an ancient Egyptian dinner, our modern dinners, with all their gastronomical appliances, are little better than starveling sophistications. If the allegation of lost arts be sustained or demonstrated by a critical survey of the Egyptian laboratory, workshop, or factory, eating on a gigantic scale may also be regarded as one of the artes perdita. England has been pronounced to be an "eminently dining nation;" and it has been sarcastically said that "her hypocrites cannot harangue, her knaves cannot intrigue, her dupes cannot subscribe, and her cabinet ministers cannot consult without the intervention of a dinner." But let us examine the history of dinners in an inverse order, tracing their genealogy backwards from England's Modern Babylon to Egypt's "City of Thrones," and we shall be compelled to admit our inferiority. The stream inverting the natural order grows wider and deeper as you ascend to its source. gulosity of Parson Adams and Tom Jones yields to Massinger's Justice Greedy, and his ideas of various and substantial dishes must give precedence to Chaucer's Franklein:

The

"Withouten bake mete never was his house,

Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous, It snewed in his hall of mete and drinke, Ofevery dainty that men could of thinke."

But, after all, what were English to the Roman gourmands who preceded, and, perhaps, taught them? Think of Esop's single dish that cost 800l., of Domitian's rhombus, of Vitellius's shield of Minerva, of Maximin's elephantine breakfasts, of Heliogabalus's parrot tongues! What glory to the imperial glutton who offered half his empire for a new sauce; what spirit in the resolution of Apicius when he destroyed himself because he had only 220,000l. sterling left to be devoted to the purposes of gastronomy!

Look again at the frequency of the Roman meals, and we shall be quickly satisfied (which Roman gastronomy was not) that our meals are parsimonious and unsatisfactory innovations on a grand omnivorous

system. There was the jentaculum, the prandium, the merenda, the canum, the comissatio. What an enviable digestion the Romans must have had, especially when we consider their dishes, their roast boars, swines' bellies, goats and squirrels, cranes, peacocks, swans, and guinea-pigs!

Yet what was Roman gluttony compared to the gigantic gourmandism of Egypt! Plutarch records the memorable circumstance of fifteen boars being roasted whole for a supper of Antony and Cleopatra; and Lucian describes a dinner given by the "Gipsy Queen" to Cæsar during a former liaison, which was "mounted" on the same gigantic scale :

"With dainties Egypt piled the groaning board,

Whatever sea, or sky, or land afford."

This, too, was in the decline of Egypt under the Greek dynasty! From that ex pede Herculem we may infer how Gargantuan were her repasts in the zenith of her greatness. Homer, who had grateful reminiscences of the dinners given by the kings and magnates of the Theban City of Thrones, leads to a favourable imagination of the scale on which they were conducted by describing the glorious spreads in which the Grecian heroes of the Iliad, their contemporaries, indulged. We will take the first example that occurs.

"Patroclus o'er the blazing fire Heaps in the brazen vase three chines entire ;

The brazen vase Automedon sustains, Which flesh of porker, sheep, and goat contains ;

Achilles at the genial feast presides,
The parts transfixes and with skill divides.
Meanwhile Patroclus sweats the fire to

Who, opposite Ulysses, full in sight, Each portion parts and orders all aright. The first fat portion to the immortal pow'rs

Amid the greedy flames Patroclus pours; Then each indulging in the social feast, The rage of hunger and of thirst represt."

It is a curious reflection that the ancient Thebans, seated in chairs in the English (not the Roman) fashion, the ladies being intermixed with the gentlemen, often dined off roast beef and goose; that they had their puddings and pies; that they drank their beer out of glasses, and their wine out of decanters; that they challenged each other as we now do, and drank toasts and healths. They had whets before dinner, like the Russians, consisting of pungent vegetables or strong cordials, handed round the drawing-room, previous to applying the test of the appetite to the more substantial luxuries of the dining

room.

Though beef and goose (mutton was excluded in compliment to the ram-headed Ammon) constituted the staple articles of a good dinner in the

City of Thrones," other rarities and substantials were added at the tables of the rich, such as widgeons, quails, wild ducks, kid, and fish of various kinds, intermixed with an endless succession of vegetables.

In one respect we might take a lesson from the Egyptian bon virant. The torture of suspense to which a dinner-party in our civilised times is exposed during the awful hour which precedes dinner has often furnished the essayist and the Cockney with materials of eloquent complaint. "They managed these things better" in the "hundred-gated" metropolis. The Egyptian bon vivants had music to entertain their guests both before and after that meal, which, according to a learned authority, constitutes the most serious as well as agreeable occupation of our existence.

Generally, dinner was served without a cloth; although there are instances of linen coverings in imitation of palm-leaves. Plates were occasionally used; perhaps knives, as both are seen among the painted frescoes of the tombs exhibited on sideboards. There was no 66 silverfork school," because there were no forks. There might, nevertheless, have been a "silver-spoon school,"

a

without any reflection on the mental acuteness of the real Theban "Amphytrion," for he is the "real Amphytrion with whom one dines." Spoons were used instead of forks, with a similar bowl, but with shorter handle than ours. Those in the British Museum are of ornamented tortoise-shell, ivory, and alabaster. There can scarcely be a doubt that similar utensils of silver and gold were used at the great tables. Considering that the chief dishes were rich soups and stews, spoons were at all events a more civilised custom than Chinese chopsticks or Turkish fingers. It is not improbable that both knife and silver spoon were used. Dinner was served on a round table. Near the dishes were placed ornamented rolls of wheaten bread; trays of which, in readiness, were also profusely heaped on adjacent sideboards. Homer says, speaking of a Theban banquet, "the glittering canisters were piled with bread;" napkins and water-ewers were supplied the guests by beautiful slaves of both sexes who waited on them, and who presented them wine in goblets. Ionians and Greeks, as well as Negroes, are undoubtedly among them. The dessert generally consisted of grapes, dates, and figs. Changes were made by removing the table, with all the dishes upon it, and substituting in this manner a second and third course.

The frescoes which record these circumstances depict the luxurious variety of a Theban dinner. Others record a ponderous profusion and abundant simplicity, more consonant to the banquet of Achilles.

Complete pictures are seen in the tombs of the whole preparatory process, ab ovo. First appears the poultry-yard, with the cooped and fattened poultry in the process of selection and plucking; next, the shambles; and lastly, the kitchen, where we have the whole culinary process laid open before us. First the ox is slaughtered and divided into joints; some for roasting_and stewing, and some for boiling. Ribs of beef, fillets, legs of beef, calves'head, liver, hearts, and tongues, seem to be the favourite joints. some are perfectly indescribable by any modern designation; and others, though unique, are still traditionally

But

patronised by the bon vivants of Cairo. We are next introduced to the kitchen, where we see a large caldron of bronze placed in a tripod over the fire, and nearly as portentous in size as that which figured at the Achillean festival,

"A brazen caldron of capacious frame They bring and place above the roaring flame."

We behold one of the cook's assistants stirring the fire with a poker; another blowing it with bellows; a third skimming the surface of the hash or soup; a fourth stirring the ingredients of a caldron with a large fork; a fifth pounding salt or pepper, and seasoning the savoury viands. In one instance, a spit is passed through a goose intended to be roasted; a dwarf slave (such as the Romans patronised on account of their grotesque drollery) holds and turns it over a charcoal fire, while he uses a fan to keep the charcoal bright.*

The pastrycook's or confectionary department was separated. In this department we see assistants engaged in sifting and mixing flour, kneading paste, spreading it and rolling it, making sweetmeats and maccaroni, or forming the paste into various shapes of biscuits and rolls, cakes and tarts, over which were sprinkled seeds of the sesamum and carraway. Cakes and puddings, mixed with fruit, are also observable in process of formation; we may trace them to the baker, and afterwards to the shelves, on which they are deposited until required.

A wise man has said, "Is there any thing of which it may be said, Lo, this is new! Behold, it has been of old time, even before us! The thing which has been is the thing which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun." The dinner frescoes under survey abundantly prove the axiom.

Butchers, it has been shewn, were employed in the kitchen for the pur

In

pose of dissecting the joints. Rosellini's Civil Monuments of Egypt (plate 83), one of these assistant butchers is sharpening a knife upon a steel suspended from his waist, and which is exactly similar to the butchers' steels employed at the present day.

Encore un coup: the preparations for a great dinner on a sumptuous and extensive scale are seen in the tomb of Menoptha at Saccareh. A subordinate tableau represents two pastrycooks occupied; the one in moulding, the other in baking, certain delicacies of a round or flat form, which, beyond a doubt, represent tartlets or patties, which seem to have been much in request among the Theban gastronomes, and for which the modern pastrycooks of Cairo, according to the ludicrous testimony of little Hunchback, in the Arabian Nights, have been traditionally famous. In another compartment, a pastrycook appears with a tray of these tartlets on his head, to which the symbol implying the arithmetical number "one thousand" (in Oriental language, the "man of a thousand tarts") is appended,-no doubt, with a view of signifying the large consumption of his trade. A Theban lad (perhaps a schoolboy) beneath, with admiring hands directed towards the tray, is in the act of making a purchase of the tempting luxuries. Well do we remember, in our schoolboy days, purchasing of the school pastrycook (whom the boys characteristically designated as Mr. Joseph Stale) certain compound friandises of fruit and pastry, ingeniously constructed in the shape of geese, lambs, and pigs. Who

would not imagine that these were modern inventions in deference to

juvenile gulosity? But no such thing. Lo and behold! the same unctuous rarities appear on the shelves of the "man of a thousand tarts."

One little incident in a dinner fresco or tableau is really new—or,