hours) to boil. Well, we will suppose the pudding ordered, and the dinner hour six. Your party is assembled; you are all hunger and expectation, in enters Ben with the pudding! and only witness the eager watchfulness of his eyes as he scans the party round for a look (he does not want words at such a time) of "Ben, you have done wonders-all right." Now mind how you remove a centre from the lid, and have the oysters at hand ready to pop in. Oysters cook sufficiently well with the heat of the pudding they are put in. Boil them in the pudding itself and they turn out tough and tasteless, like (in short), so many pieces of leather. The removal of the lid is a work of some nicety. Only hear what Ben has to say on this point! Now, however, it is time to remove the lid once more, the oysters are well done; and the only question is who shall be helped first : "Fair fa' your honest sonsie face, *k as This saying of grace is by no means an unnecessary matter. Some short one should be said on this, and on all similar occasions, lang's my arm," is a mile too long. Beau Nash's is not a bad one. "Come, gentlemen, cat, and welcome." Better still is old Lady Hobart's grace. "Well," says my lady, looking anxiously round for some one to say grace at table, "I think I must say as one did in the like case, God be thanked, nobody will say grace." This was said a century and a half before Sheridan was born. You may safely say grace over any thing that Ben serves up. It is not, however, at every tavern in London that you may with any thing like common prudence ejaculate a "Thank God" for what is set before you. Do not forget Mrs. Johnson's memorable saying to her husband, the celebrated "Sam." The Doctor, though always complaining about his dinners, never omitted to "Thank God" for what was set before him. In a party of six over a Beefsteak Pudding (hang it, we had nearly written the name of the pudding without the capital letters so particularly its due) great care should be taken to select the most impartial individual of the company for the all-important office of carver. In the distribution of a Beef-steak Pudding this is very essential. The lid is always the lightest part of the paste, and the most digestible; a fair share of this, though of the size of half-acrown, is, therefore, due to every partaker. Then the equal distribution of the better portion of the meat, of the gravy, the oysters,-yes, and the kidneys too, demands the scales of Justice herself. Then an experienced carver will keep something good in reserve for second helpings. The taste refines by what it feeds on. Do not, therefore, deal too lavishly at first in the very pope's eye of the pudding. To have an army of reserve is a golden maxim. You may lose a whole circle of acquaintances by your manner of carving. Remember the fate of a certain Robert Sinclair, who used to say that he had thirty friends during a fortnight's residence at Harrogate, and lost them all in the carving of one haunch of venison. You may dine on Thursday at the Three Tuns in Billingsgate, at the one, or at the four o'clock fish ordinary. We recommend the former, though the hour is an early one; but it is for this reason, that the salesmen of the market generally sit down to it, and the fish, we have always thought, is a shade if any thing the better. We are however assured, that this is not the case, and Mr. Simpson indignantly denies the difference. We have no reason to doubt his veracity, and the difference may, perhaps, be altogether imaginary. Let the difference then be what * L'Estrange's Collection in Thoms' Anecdotes and Traditions. Printed for the Camden Society. it will, the four o'clock dinner is a cheap and capital one at double the price Mr. Simpson charges. We know not where you could get such another dinner for eighteen-pence, or even for three times the sum. Think of a fine fish course-a noble cod, or salmon, or turbot at one end; a large dish of fried cod at the other, with fried soles and fried eels in the centre, melted butter, soy, and anchovy sauces, potatoes and bread at pleasure. This seems more than enough for the money; but eighteenpence provides for a very great deal at the Three Tuns in Billingsgate. The fish removed (and very little goes down), there is a capital dinner of butcher's meat and greens -a piece of roast beef at one end, and a boiled leg of mutton, or some such kind of dish, at the otherroast at the head, boiled at the bottom, with an ample dish of beefsteaks (tolerably good, too,) in the centre of the table. It is very hard if you cannot dine with such a fare before you. But your eighteenpence is not yet exhausted there is cheese (not "pippins and cheese") to follow. And all, we repeat, for eighteenpence ! The thing is marvellous. There are, however, other recommendationsthe water which is placed on the table in a row of hock-bottles down the middle is worthy of Hare Court in the Temple, or of Aldgate pump, hard by. The sherry, too, is not amiss, by any means, for tavern sherry; and the punch But before we enlarge upon the punch, a few rules for the guidance of the stranger who dines there for the first time may be found of service. If you wish to dine at one, take your seat a quarter of an hour before; if the little transept at the head of the table is taken (and plates turned over are put there to denote when it is engaged) take your seat a little lower down, but still towards the head. If you arrive late-and three minutes before the time is reckoned lateseize a Windsor-chair, towards the lower end, or towards the very centre of the table-you are near the main dishes there. You will find it a safe rule if you are at the foot never to ask for what is at the head, or at the head for the dish in active operation at the foot. Do not be misled because many at table drink beernever swim fish in beer; ask for half-a-pint of sherry, and if you take eels, a toothful of brandy (the brandy is sent round) is no bad security from after disagreements. With your cheese "a thumb of ale," as they call it, is far from bad. But don't go away. Readjust yourself in your Windsor chair, order a glass of cold punch, seize a cigar or a clay, and play Sir Walter Raleigh at the Three Tuns in Billingsgate. A clay seems much in favour. The Guy Faux lanthorn on the table is a kind of provocative to take one. But do not allow the seductive drinks and attractions of this Billingsgate Castle of Indolence to venture on a second glass of punch, or you will find some difficulty when in the cold air to preserve your balance or even to call for a cab to take you home. The celebrated Earl of Chesterfield met a couple of chairmen carrying a portly person home to his lodgings at the Bath. The earl thought he recognised a friend in the drunkard in their care. He asked them who they had with them. 66 Only Mr. Quin, my lord, who has just left the Three Tuns." "Left the Three Tuns!" was Lord Chesterfield's reply. "Gad! I think old John Dory has brought one away with him." * Friday we will set aside for Joe's in Finch Lane. Here the pink and perfection of a dinner is half a steak and half a steak to follow. You have the advantage in winter of sitting near the fire, and of seeing your dinner cooked full in the face before you. To enjoy a steak thoroughly at Joe's you must not drink his beer. If you want a liquid of any kind, half a glass of water is the utmost you should take. The steaks at Joe's are tender and full of gravy (the best out of sight in London), you will, therefore, want scarcely any thing to drink while your pewterplate is before you. But the dish cleared out, take our advice,—and pay. You are confoundedly thirsty! -of course you are. Call a cab, or Quin, the actor, here spoken of, was so fond of a John Dory that he went to Plymouth (then a difficult journey) on purpose to taste one in full perfection. - a step into an omnibus, and tell the man to put you down at the Cock at Temple Bar. Ten minutes, or less, will take you there, and thenwhole libation of half-and-half. We can picture you before us, laying your ears down at it, with the bottom of the pewter in the air, and a "Thank God, a good dinner!" half uttered from your lips. Suppose, however, another course. Take a cab (walking is out of the question at such a time), and tell the man to drive you to the Shades at London Bridge. Half-a-pint from the wood (imperial measure) is no bad sauce to a steak at Joe's. We recommend port: a modicum of sherry reminds us too forcibly of "the vinegar-cruet" (a pint of sherry), to which James Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, was reduced by the physicians, who wished to keep him to his friends a little longer. If you cannot find a friend to ask you to the Steaks (that little Escurial behind the Lyceum), you cannot do better than try a west-end dinner on Saturday at the Blue Posts in Cork Street-Tom Hill's retreat, when he was not asked out by others or by himself. Do not confound the Blue Posts in Cork Street with the Blue Posts in the Haymarket, as some have done, a much older place, it is true (orthodox, too, at one time, for five bishops dined here together in the reign of James II.), but poor and Leagre in comparison with Hill's last quarters. The Saturday's joint is a noble piece of beef, boiled in Old-Bailey fashion; the hour, six; and the charge-but the charge is high-comparatively high. A salmon-steak and soy to begin with will usher in the beef better than any thing else we can name-unless, perhaps, a fried sole; but of this we are somewhat doubtful. The malt is good, nor is the wine indifferent. It is wise, however, to reserve yourself for the Baked Purch (capital letters again--it well deserves it), the envy of Ben at the Cheshire Cheese, and not thought bad by the cunning concocter of the article at the Three Tuns in Billingsgate. With a good foundation of beef, and the useful precaution of not mixing your liquors, you need not fear the least symptom of a to-morrow's headach. It is your vile practice of taking three or four different kinds of drinks at a meal that plays the deuce with you the next day. Stick to one or even two kinds of drinks, and you will wake like a lark in the morning, as if the libation of last night was a mere dew-drop in its effects. It was thought a piece of puppyism in the reign of Queen Elizabeth to call for the bill of fare: the individual in quest of a dinner entered the larder, and took a survey for himself. A good soup and a pullet was thought no bad dinner, provided there was a Sussex wheat-ear in the house, or jacksnipes so fat you would think they had their winding-sheets on. But men in those days partook of a hearty supper,-of a venison pasty, as Pepys did, or a roast chine of beef, like the Duchess of Cleveland. Supper was looked upon as a sort of turnpike, through which one must pass in order to go to bed. Few supped as lightly as Sir Roger de Coverley: "good Cheshire cheese, best mustard, a golden pippin, and a pipe of John Sly's best." We feel assured, should the time revive for inspecting larders and rejecting bills of fare, that the larder of the Blue Posts will bear inspection. There is always more (when the larder is at the lowest) than Pope conceived was sufficient for a dinner. How will the reader "solemnise the Lord's" on brocoli and mutton at the Blue Posts in Cork Street, at the Cock, at the Cheshire Cheese, or better still on Sunday, at his own fireside? But here it is we separate, not without a maxim (so we may safely call it) from the great moralist of his age: "Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, for I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind any thing else."*" * Dr. Johnson. T VELASCO; OR, MEMOIRS OF A PAGE.* THE men of the past generation, as well as the men of the present, know Cyrus Redding as the Nestor of newspapers and the Methuselah of magazines, while those who have marked his course more nearly are aware that, independently of innumerable contributions to our popular literature, published here, there, and everywhere, he is most favourably known as the author of the History of Modern Wines, of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, and last, though not least, as the inventor of that famous "Leek Pie," which bears his odorous name in one of the most recent treatises on the art of cookery.† Now, however, at the twelfth hour, the gallant and the gallant old man, comes out in a new character, and startles the town with a three-vol. novel, entitled Velasco, or Memoirs of a Page. The story is the history of a Spanish aventurero, born on the Cerillo del Rastro of Madrid, who begins life by holding horses, is noticed by a Franciscan friar, who teaches him reading and writing, Latin and arithmetic, and, ultimately, obtains him the situation of page in the household of the Duke of Uzeda, a grandee of Spain. Here, however, the clever author of this amusing work commits an error, which is noticeable, or, as the Germans say, mark-worthy, if the book be meant as an accurate historical record of the manners and customs of Spain a century ago. Though it was not necessary to prove nobility of birth to enter as page into the household of a simple Spanish don, yet such proof of nobility was indispensable in order to obtain the situation in the princely house of a grandee of the first class, as the Duke d'Uzeda is represented to be. Even in France, a court always less ceremonious than the court of Spain, at the end of the reign of Louis XIV., four generations of noblesse were required of a youth before he was allowed to enter as a page de la grande écurie, or even of the petite écurie. And in Spain, before the period we speak of, there was a kind of college of pages, an institution afterwards transplanted into France. It was the custom in Spain, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth, to educate these young pages apart; and his Catholic, as well as his most Christian majesty, was served at table by pages, under whom again were valets and lacqueys of an inferior order. And even so late as the beginning of the present century, Buonaparte, in taking possession of the throne of the Bourbons, revived the institution of pages. But these youths, impudent and audacious dogs as they were, instead of being the sons of the shambles, as Mr. Redding makes Velasco, were the children of ancient houses or the sons of his most illustrious servants, military or civil, whom the little Corsican emperor caused to be educated at his own expense. Even in England pages were always chosen among youths of gentle birth. The great Marlborough was, as every body knows, a page to James, duke of York; and if our memory does not deceive us, for we write without having access to books, the present Duke of Wellington was in early life a page to an Irish lordlieutenant. If, therefore, Mr. Redding wish to be in strict keeping with history, he is incorrect in giving his hero so ignoble an origin. A page, however, Velasco is appointed, and being a buen mozo, as well as quick-witted, companionable, fond of adventure, and unscrupulous, he has an opportunity of seeing the "mingled yarn of good and ill together of which Spanish life is composed. Not merely does the page write down his own adventures and misadventures, but he lays bare to us the hideous anatomical demonstration of a grandee's house. Here, in these volumes, we have a just impersonation of the meanness that soars, of the pride that licks the dust. The whole social, politieal, and clerical * Velasco; or, Memoirs of a Page. In 3 vols. By Cyrus Redding. London, Newby. 1846. The Practical Cook. By J. Bregion and Anne Millar. life of Madrid, is laid open before us with amazing truth and fidelity. Nor is it merely characters and personages, general or individual, that are well portrayed, as the grandee, the minister of state, the priest, the escrivano, the banker, the bull-fighter, the alguazil, the robber, the scheming courtezan, the housekeeper of the curate, the man of many projects,-but scenery and locality are painted with a correctness truly miraculous, considering that Mr. Redding has never visited the country. It may be answered that Le Sage, like Mr. Redding, never set his foot in Spain (and this we believe to be the fact, though the contrary is stoutly maintained by the Count François de Neufchâteau and Monsieur Harmois, attaché of the French embassy at Madrid); but then, though Le Sage's general acquaintance with the habits and manners of Spain cannot be denied, as is well observed by Mr. Ford in his excellent Handbook of Spain, yet he makes many mistakes in the topography of the country and in local descriptions. Mr. Redding, however, appears acquainted with the τοποι καὶ Tge of the Iberian Peninsula. In these volumes Velasco assumes many parts, and plays them all amusingly, if not all well. He is boon companion of a monk, the friend of a marquis, the favoured of a marchioness, the secretary of a council of ministers, the companion of a strolling band of gipsies, a staid, loving, married man, settled down in Valencia, a sorrowing widower, the dupe of artful sharpers, a second time a married man, and a place-holder in expectation. These varied alternations of fortune open to us new views and new characters, in which Jew and gipsy both figure. Velasco, in telling his own story, makes the most of what he has seen and observed. Sometimes his adventures are but the peg on which he hangs a sketch of the manners and characters of those with whom he comes into contact-sometimes they afford him food for contemplation to the indulgence of sweet or bitter fancy. The characters are varied and for the most part spiritedly drawn. There is love and passion, as a matter of course, in a novel where the scene is laid in Spain; but neither the love nor the passion overlie or encumber the solid good sense and sharp satire of the book. Every page makes it plain to the reader's apprehension that he is dealing with a sharp observer of the world, and one who looks through the deeds of men with an open and keenly discerning eye. The tone of the novel is occasionally bitter and sarcastic, sometimes sad and mournful, but without any sickly sentimentality, and most frequently indicative of an ardent and unsuspicious nature, full of genuine good feeling good nature, and good sense. Nor are these volumes without a political tendency. Some of the sharpest strokes of satire are directed, through the bodies of Spanish statesmen, bishops, and leaders of parties, against men in high places at home. One of the best drawn-characters in the book is the Conde de Guipuscoa, and who does not as he reads see that a certain ex-Chancellor has sat for the portrait ? "The confidence and the fluency of language at the disposal of the Conde de Guipuscoa, the last being the result of study, joined with natural aptitude, were great. Presumptuously aspiring after superiority in every branch of knowledge, he failed to be profound in any-occasionally blundering upon all. His manner was ungraceful. Impetuous, egotistic, insolent, vituperative, unscrupulous, his oratory shewed no repose in its breathless denunciations. None of the hallowed inspiration that dignify, no ray of genius broke in upon the intense selfishness or illumined the lurid virulence by which it was characterised. Ever resonant with invective, yet marked by no originality of thought, he startled his auditors by the wonderful complexity and involution of his language, which it would seem he himself deemed the most effective resource of eloquence when united with spleen and ferocity of unconfronted declamation. Cold and calculating himself, his eloquence could not be wholly termed the reflexion of his own nature, for that was vehement and headstrong. The deep things of the soul, the developement of which speaks the presence of inspiration in the orator, he never exhibited, for he could not impart that he did not feel. Nor did he ever expatiate in the regions of tranquil beauty, sounding the notes that touch the finer chords of the human heart, since they vibrate sympathies to which he was a stranger. "Nor did he ever amend one errant spirit by an appeal to the kindly feelings of a |