she was going back to the chateau. I made no scruple of leaving at the same time, being convinced that I could cause her no annoyance. For apart from the extreme insignificance in the eyes of the rich heiress, both of myself and of my company, a tête-à-tête conversation usually is no discomfort to her, her mother having resolutely given her the liberal education which she herself received in one of the British colonies: for the English custom, as is well known, allows women before marriage all the liberty which we sagely grant them from the day when any abuse of it becomes irreparable. We left the garden together, then; I held the stirrup while she mounted her horse, and we set out for the chateau. After a few paces, she said to me: 'Upon my word, sir, I fancy I disturbed you yonder very unluckily. You were getting on charmingly.' 'It is true, Mademoiselle; but as I had been there a long time, I forgive you, and even thank you.' 'You are very attentive to our poor neighbor. My mother is very grateful to you for it.' 'And your mother's daughter?' said I, laughing. 'Oh! I am not so easily moved. If you want me to admire you, you must have the goodness to wait a little longer first. I am not in the habit of judging lightly of human actions, which generally have two faces. I confess, your conduct towards Mlle, de Porhoët looks well, but—' Here she paused, tossed her head, and continued in a serious, bitter, thoroughly insulting tone. But I am not quite sure that you are not paying your court to her in the hope of becoming her heir.' I felt that I turned pale. Still reflecting on the absurdity of answering this young girl in a hectoring style, I restained myself and said to her gravely: 'Allow me, Mademoiselle, sincerely to pity you.' She seemed much surprised. To pity me, Sir?' 'Yes, Mademoiselle, allow me to express the respectful pity to which you seem to me to be entitled.' 'Pity!' she said, stopping her horse, and turning toward me her eyes half-shut in disdain. You have the advantage of me, for I do not understand you.' 'Yet it is very simple, Mademoiselle: if the loss of faith in goodness, if doubt and deadness of soul, are the bitterest fruits of a long life's experience, nothing in the world deserves more compassion than a heart that is withered by mistrust before it has lived.' 'Sir,' replied Mlle. Larouque, with a vivacity far removed from her ordinary way of speaking, 'you do not know what you are talking about! And,' she added, more sternly, 'you forget to whom you are speaking!' ‘True, Mademoiselle,' I replied quietly, with a bow; 'I am speaking somewhat without knowledge, and I am forgetting somewhat to whom I speak; but you set me the example.' Mlle. Marguérite, with her eyes fixed on the tops of the trees that skirted the road, returned with ironical haughtiness: 'Must I ask your pardon?'. 'Certainly, Mademoiselle,' I replied firmly, if one of us two had pardon to ask of the other, it would be you; you are rich, and I am poor; you can lower yourself, I cannot!' There was a silence. Her compressed lips, her distended nostrils, a sudden paleness on her forehead, proved the combat that was raging within her. Suddenly lowering her whip as if for a salute-'Very well!' she said, 'pardon!' And immediately she gave her horse a fierce cut with the whip, and set off at a gallop, leaving me in the middle of the road. DEIPNOLOGICA VARIOSA. A GREAT many years ago, when, like Mr. Halleck's Fanny - who must be, if surviving, a positive Sarah of longevity, and like many gentlemen who were my contemporaries in my primitive baldness and toothlessness - I was younger than I am now, and perhaps prettier, my eating was made a part of my moral education: by which I am very far from meaning to say, that any Brillat-Savarin moulded my inchoate palate, or guided my infant gusto. The reader, if his memory of juvenile experiences be reasonably good, will remember several dietetic abominations, which are the peculiar pride of New-England tables; and which, having come into high fashion in those dreary Pilgrim days, when there was nothing else to eat, have been eaten traditionally and from a sense of duty ever since, and not in the least from relish, or the satisfaction which they afford to the inexperienced. There was at least a propriety in eating pork in default of beef; and the Pythagorean beans, when green peas were wanting; or potatoes, if one could get no cauliflowers; or salt cod, well flooded with the essential oil of pig, if one could compass no provent more salutary or savory; or in drinking sour cider in the absence of Haut Barsac, or St. Julien Medoc. Dwelling among savages, this band of exiles, after they had moored their bark on the wild New-England shore, and had performed the proper devotional exercises, however high their previous taste, were obliged to eat as the savages around them did; and thus to expose themselves to fearful atttacks of gripes, and a general disarrangement of that 'raging canawl,' scientifically known as the alimentary, by devouring quantities of the sickishuog, or clam, which the ALL-WISE undoubtedly meant for fish-bait, as he meant oats for 'horses and Scotchmen;' or of green corn, which will do occasionally, when the Asiatic cholera is not imminent; or of fish, which must be cured, and is spoiled in the curing. I wish it to be distinctly understood, that I do not blame the Puritans for eating of these things, when they had Hobson's choice only; but why it should be thought necessary to celebrate the LORD's Day by the weekly devouring of these dainties; why persons of wealth should deem it a religious duty to charge themselves with fish-balls well wadded in with chunks of brown-bread, in these times of tender chops and savory steaks; why they stick by beans, which do so fearfully stick by them, with the finest market in the world'—I refer to that less imaginatively known as 'Funnel,' and occasionally spoken of as 'Old Funnel,' as if it were a miracle of antiquity-is what I do not comprehend. But I do not find it so difficult to understand the fierce wrath of the Puritan soul, and the turbulent stomach, when rumor came of the riotous doings of Squire Thomas Morton, formerly of Furnival's Inn, and afterward of Mount Wollaston, otherwise called Mare-Mount, or Merry-Mount,* and then Mount Dagon. I can imagine the indignation of some saintly but still human Puritan, who had not had a drop of comfortable strong waters for a month, when he heard of the roysterings and revels of the jolly dwellers upon that delectable mountain. The May-pole did not, of course, have a depressing effect upon his gorge; but when he was told of 'ten pound worth of wine and spirits in the morning,' the news was too much for his hissing-hot stomach. So the jovial Thomas was first 'set in the bilbous, and after sent prisoner to England,' where he drank Rosa Solis with Ben Jonson, and consoled himself, as so many unhappy gentleman have done, by writing a wrathful little book called "The New Canaan,' which, in its coat of rusty black, I have seen reposing in its old age upon the shelves of an eminent statesman, who treated it with more respect than he bestowed upon many a stately folio causing it to be continually dusted with great tenderness, and to be sedulously protected from the mauraudings of moths, and the light fingers of bibliomaniacs. Nor does it seem that our Puritan friends, whenever there happened to be policy in it, disdained to do as Master Morton did; and with profound philosophy, to find the Indian heart through the Indian stomach; the favor of many a truculent warrior being secured by judicious presents of tobacco, of beer, and of mugs from which to drink it. In this way was the Sachem Chickatabot partially disarmed; and when the advantage was followed up by a present of pantaloons made after the English fashion, the stern warrior at once joined the Peace Society, or at least contented himself with scalping his rival red-skins, who had shown themselves proof against the blandishments of British breeches. Unfortunately Mr. Thomas Morton mixed gunpowder with his donative rum; an operation which is traditionally declared to have had a marvellously encouraging effect upon the brave tars of the frigate Constitution,' but which, however excellent the ingredients, could not have rendered the Massachusetts aborigines particularly pleasant neighbors. The truth is, your Englishman has a natural, although I admit a not over-delicate appreciation of creature comfort, and goes about the world conquering and to conquer, with a sword in one hand, a spit in the other, and the formula in his pocket for melted butter - that sole sauce which Voltaire placed in startling antithesis to the hundred Anglican religions. There is a coarse passage in Venice Preserved' which positively declares, if an Englishman be furnished with beef, THOMAS himself spells it Mare-Mount; and I incline to the belief, that he meant SeaMount, or Sea-View, and not Merry-Mount at all. a sea-coal fire, and one other comfort, which we cannot name to ears polite, that he will be ready for all manner of treasons and conspiracies. Indeed, it is curious to notice how much eating and drinking there is in the English drama, and how small a figure these accomplishments make in the plays of other languages. In Colman's 'Inkle and Yarico,' when Mr. Trudge is left in the wilderness, with the usual stage propriety, he sings a comic song-not at all comical - in which, after a touching allusion to 'the gay chop-house signs' of London, he warbles after this fashion : 'FOR a neat slice of beef I could roar like a bull; And my stomach 's so empty, my heart is quite full.' It will be found, indeed, that the highest as well as the lowest English literature has a dietetical squint. I am not about to say that this is, ex necessitate, coarse or animal; and, if I should say so, every one who has read the sensuous reverberations of Milton, or his softer but still epicurean sonnets, might encounter and vanquish me in a ‘veni-vidivici '-eous way. But every where, in the best and in the worst company, one sees how much the kitchen has done for ali writers; or failing the cook, how much the tapster has accomplished. 'Tis the same in tragedy or in comedy, and 't is not wanting even in the records of religion. You may miss it in Aaron Hill's frigid reproductions of French tragedy, but you do not miss it in the rantipole interludes (which are emphatically Hill's own) sung between the acts of Zara,' and intended to fit French claret for English stomachs, by giving it a dash of brandy; and in which 'He' tells' She,' that men 'dream not that eating will appetite tire.' In High Life below Stairs,' one of the cleverest farces of the last century, the offence of the servants is, that they have, at their master's expense, 'had a smack of every sort of wine, from humble Port to imperial Tokay.' There is a rivulet of wine running upon its sparkling course, from the beginning to the end of Congreve's matchless comedies. Valentine plies Trapland the scrivener, who comes to arrest him, with wine, and 'cannot talk about business upon a thirsty palate,' and plies him to the good purpose of a reprieve from arrest. All the metamphors of the play shoot in that direction. Sir Sampson Legend complains that his spendthrift son 'has organs of digestion and concoction large enough for a cardinal;' and goes on, in his grief and wrath, to inquire: Why was I not a bear, that my cubs might have lived upon sucking their paws?' How charmingly, to refer again to Milton, is Comus described: 'OFFERING to every weary traveller |