tions were soon fulfilled; in a few words her uncle told her that he had had the intended conversation with his nephew, that he had found from his statements that a change of tutors was desirable, and that, though he did not quite approve of all parts of Charlie's conduct, especially his determination to resist Mr. Johnson's authority instead of appealing to those better fitted to judge between them, he admitted that he had had cause for dissatisfaction. "There is another person, however," continued the speaker, "whose behaviour is deserving of all praise; you did not tell me, Emmy, of the excellent advice you gave your cousin, and of all the efforts you made to induce him to act rightly; but he has not been so silent, he tells me that it was your earnest expostulation that brought him back to a sense of his duty to-day; that only for you he would have neglected his studies entirely, gone into town as he had at first intended, and dared Mr. Johnson's displeasure. My dear child, I think you have been rewarded, and now I have a plan to propose which I hope will satisfy you as much as it does Charlie. I intend to undertake the post of tutor, I have plenty of spare time for it, and if you wish, I shall be delighted to teach you tco such things as my mother would allow me; you and Charlie could study them together, and I will promise to be a just master to you, even though I may be a strict one."

Poor Emily!-she hardly dared to believe what she heard; uncle Robert, good, kind uncle Robert, to be Charlie's tutor! Her brightest hopes had never reached such a pitch of delight; she could scarcely collect her senses sufficiently to remember that an answer was expected, until Charlie eagerly urged her to speak, and she saw uncle Robert's smile as he asked her what was her decision! Her reply was not very intelligible after all, but the joy that shone through the tears that would not be kept back, and the almost convulsive clinging to the arm that her uncle put round her, gave very plain token of her earnest assent to the proposition, so off the trio went to relate the whole affair to grandmamma, and to gain her consent, an easy matter in most things where the happiness of her grandchildren was concerned and her son Robert was the advocate.

All that remained to be done after that, was to arrange with Mrs. Euston, and subsequently with Mr. Johnson about the change, and as that gentleman had plenty of other employment more congenial to his taste, he made no difficulty about his resignation of office, even going so far in his com placency as to dispense with the usual notice, and at the end of the ensuing week yielding up his chair to the new professor. So happily ended Emily's anxieties in this quarter, and every one had cause to be satisfied with hers and Charlie's diligence under their present teacher, who often said that he found his place a very easy one indeed. "A helper," in every sense of the word, had Emily been in this instance, but so intent was she on her plans that she scarcely remembered her aunt's words till all was over.

At last summer began to decline and autumn to appear, and Emily, who had been for some time getting homesick, wrote to say that she must soon return to Burnham, she was longing so to see every one there again. The an nouncement, when it was made at the Hall, produced a great commotion; no one could be induced at all to dispense with her company; as for Charlie, he was quite beside himself at the idea, and said a great deal to prove the utter impossibility of allowing of such a step. So a compromise was effected. Mr. and Mrs. Wishart accepted a pressing invitation to the Hall, and came thither, accompanied by aunt Kate, whose health would, it was hoped, be improved by the comparative' mildness of its more southern situation. As for Emily, though anxious to visit Burnham, she was too unwilling to quit Arden to quarrel with the plan, and the arrival of papa and mamma and aunt filled her cup of happiness to overflowing. What a joyous winter they would have, just such an one as she had often imagined; and then Miss Pyne could make aunt Kate's acquaintance, and learn from her better than from any one else, what was the right way of meeting sickness and suffering in fact, everything had been ordered exactly in the mode that suited Emily's wishes.

:

The reality quite fulfilled the expectation. The invalids became great companions, and all enjoyed themselves according to their own plans. Charlie was soon a prime favourite

MILK THE TYPE OF ALL FOOD: THE MILK OF DIFFERENT ANIMALS: CASEINE: BUTTER: LACTOSE: CHEESE: WHY IT IS EATEN: STILTON CHEESE: CHEDDAR, CHESHIRE, AND SINGLE GLO'STER CHEESES: SUFFOLK-CHEESE: PARMESAN: THE ECONOMY OF EATING CHEESE: ITS ACTION AS A DIGESTER: OLD CHEESE AND NEW.

MILK, especially mother's milk, may be considered as the great type of human food, and after its form and composition should all other 'foods be adjusted, especially in the case of persons whose condition, by reason of old age or infirmity, approaches that of the child. That milk is a type of all food is found by the fact that the young of all the higher mammalia are fed upon it for the first few months of their existence-some indeed for the space of a whole year, with scarcely any other diet. And, during this period, the infant animal increases rapidly in size, obtaining from its regimen of milk all that constitutes muscle and nerve, and bone and tissue; so that, you observe, milk must contain the essentials of all food! and is eminently worthy of our consideration.

Of what then is milk actually composed? Different animals yield milk of different composition, and human milk often varies strikingly in two individuals. Strictly speaking, I believe, it is never quite the same in two

individuals, and it differs even in the same person by reason of age, change of constitution, or state of health. This all mothers know very well indeed, since any indisposition of theirs immediately affects the child at the breast, and a change in wet-nurses is almost sure to tell in some way or other upon the nursling; also, if a babe be necessarily weaned, it is found that it thrives more uniformly from being fed with the milk of one cow, instead, as is often the case, with milk drawn indiscriminately from many

COWS.

Cow's milk is that with which in this country we are most familiar. Of course we expect milk to contain more water than beef or bread, but we may be surprised to find that its constituent of water does not exceed that of the turnip, and is much less than that of the melon. A pound of cow's milk consists of 13 oz. 333 grains of water; caseine, 350 grs.; butter, or fat, 245 grs.; sugar (of milk), 315 grs.; and mineral matter, 70 grs. Thus it ap

pears to partake of the nature of both animal and vegetable food, the large proportion of curd and butter which it contains representing the musculine of beef, and the sugar representing the starch of wheaten bread. Human milk does not differ very greatly from that taken from the mothers of the herd, but it holds more water in its composition, and nearly a third less of caseine, neither is it quite so rich in fat.

It is a common practice, therefore, when babes are fed with cow's milk, to dilute it more or less, and then to add a small quantity of sugar, to supply the deficiency occasioned by the addition of water: treated in this way cow's milk very nearly approaches human milk, but ass's milk is sup posed to be the better substitute, could we command a regular and adequate supply, which in this country it would be difficult and expensive to obtain. Ass's milk, on analysation, displays very nearly the same amount of water and mineral matter as that of the human mother-more sugar, and less caseine. Goat's milk exceeds all others in richness of organic matter, and would be therefore more unfit for infants' food than that of cows, though in some countries the milk of the goat stands in the same relation to the popular diet as does cow's milk here; but we must remember that there is a national as well as an individual and a family constitution.

Dr. Lankester, in writing about the food of children early weaned, espe cially warns nurses against the evil tendencies of sour milk, which in summertime, and especially in large towns, is often incautiously administered: the acidity may be corrected, he af firms, by the infusion of a little limewater, or a little carbonate of potash. Also, the addition of vegetable food to the milk prevents the tendency to decomposition which milk naturally possesses certainly, as a rule, when children cannot obtain mother's milk, there cannot be any better substitute than cow's milk, mixed with a certain quantity of farinaceous food. Of course the great mischief of cow's milk is the adulteration to which it is subject, but on this subject we will not touch -it would require a little pamphlet to itself.

Let us speak for a minute on the separate component parts of the familiar fluid we are now discussing. First, after water, which needs not to be referred to, we have caseine. What is caseine?

Milk by one process yields butter, and by another, curd or cheese, and it is this curd, in its natural state, to which chemists have given the name of caseine, resembling the gluten, musculine, and albumen of which we have spoken, and it is classed with them as a nutritive substance. The

curd and the butter having been completely separated, there remains the whey, from which, when evaporated, a colourless, sweet substance is ob. tained, called sugar of milk, or lactose. Also, when dried and burned in the air, milk leaves behind a small quantity of ash, or mineral matter.

This admixture in milk, the common type of human nourishment, teaches us that our food ought to contain a proper admixture of animal and vege table substances, in which the proportions of the three great constitnents-fat, starch or sugar, and fibrin or gluten, are properly adjusted. Also, we may learn that food, if not naturally liquid, should be intimately mixed with a large quantity of liquid before it is introduced into the stomach.

If you take a drop of genuine milk, and place it under a microscope, you will perceive little globales of butter floating in it; and this butter has a tendency to separate, and rise like other oils to the surface, and this taken off, we call cream. Then it is churned, and the water, sugar, and curds are pressed out of it, and the fatty substance we know as butter produced-a substance which, though incapable in itself of building up the structure of the body, is a highly useful addition to diet-a powerful ac cessory to nutritious food, though it cannot in itself give nourishment to the frame, having no nitrogen to speak of in its composition, yet it is rich in carbon, or heat-forming matters.

Now the cream, or butter, being taken from the milk, we have a quantity of fluid left, holding the caseine in solution with sugar, and water, and saline matter. If we mingle with this a certain quantity of acid, the caseine separates, and the pure whey is left, which being evaporated, gives us lactose, or sugar of milk, which you may procure at the chemist's if you please.

CASEINE, then, is the base of the substance so commonly known among us as cheese. I say the base, because cheeses are not all caseine; for the most part they contain larger or smaller quantities of fat, or butter. Where the milk is skimmed before the cheese is made, a hard dry cheese is surely the result, because caseine of itself, unmixed with butter, is naturally very hard; such cheeses are very indigesti ble and are sold at a low price, though they still contain a large amount of

flesh-forming food, and may be eaten with impunity by hardy working men whose stomachs are in healthy order.

Cheese is eaten for two entirely dif ferent purposes. One class of people consumes it as a part of regular food, for general sustenance, and another only as a condiment taken in small quantities, either with or after the ordinary fare, as is the case at dinner tables. There are, as we said, many kinds of cheeses, differing rather in the quantity than the quality of the caseine they contain, or to speak more familiarly, according to the proportion of cream they represent. When cheese is made of cream alone, we get what we call a cream cheese, rich and soft, which must be eaten comparatively fresh, as it becomes rancid very quickly. When the cream of the previous night's milking is added to the new milk of the morning, a very rich cheese, like our English Stilton, is the result; when only good new milk is used, rich cheeses, like those we call Cheddar, are produced; and when an eighth or tenth only of the cream is taken away, excellent cheeses, like the large size Cheshires, are obtained. Add the skim-milk of last night to this morning's new milk, and you get what is termed single Glo'ster. If the cream be once skimmed from the whole of the milk, you have common "skimmed-milk cheese;" if twice skimmed, cheese of the substance and nature of the bullety Friesland cheeses; and if skimmed for several days in succession, the hard horny Suffolk cheeses, which "pigs grunt at, and dogs bark at, but neither of them dare to bite."

"three times skimm'd sky-blue, To cheese converted? what can be its boast? What but the common virtues of a post!"

Nor do cheeses differ alone in the relative quantities of caseine and butter they contain: there are different modes of preparation, on which much depends; -sometimes the curds are allowed to decompose a little before they are pressed, and then they are pressed with various degrees of firmness. Also, the colour of the milk affects the cheese-some are high coloured, some are almost white. The Cheshire cheeses are coloured with annatto, and in Germany cheeses have in them a variety of substances. The celebrated Swiss cheese, Schabzeiger, is flavoured with the coumarin of the

Now in the making of cheese, the first process is the curdling of the milk, which is sometimes effected by the use of vinegar, but more generally by means of rennet. The curd is then separated from the whey, in which the sugar of milk remains dissolved; after this it is carefully salted, pressed, and dried. If the cream were not taken off, therefore, the cheese as a food would really differ from the milk chiefly in containing little or no sugar; and the more entirely the cream is removed, the more the cheese becomes removed from milk in its composition, and therefore less fitted to serve alone as nutritious animal diet. A common one-year-old skimmed milk cheese contains of

See the difference between the Cheddar, which contains more fat even than an egg, and the skimmed milk cheese, which mingles 6 of fat with 45 of the constipating curd. The former is too rich to be generally used as an article of daily food, and it is partly for this that "bread and cheese" are almost invariably eaten together. Another reason, however, being that some quantity of vegetable diet is required to accompany the cheese, in order to supply the starch or sugar required to make it equal in nourishment to the type of milk. White skim-milk cheeses should be consumed along with butter or bacon, or cooked as made dishes, with some variety of fat. The enquiry naturally arises, whether cheese is an economical article of diet? It contains that form of "flesh-forming" matter which Providence has supplied for the nourishment of young children, and indeed of the young of all the higher animals,

so that its nutritious qualities are beyond a doubt. But there remains the question of digestibility to be settled: there is nothing which contains so large a quantity of flesh-forming matter when it is digested! only, there are persons with whom it disagrees, who in fact find its digestion an impossibility. Cheese contains nearly twice the quantity of nutritive matter that you get in cooked meat, if, as I said before, you can thoroughly digest it. But unless you are a labouring man, exercising your muscles daily, living almost in the open air, and having therefore your digestive organs in the finest order, this is not very likely. A large amount of cheese, therefore, is not as a rule to be recommended as a staple diet for general constitutions.

But cheese is taken also as a relish, or condiment, in small quantities at a time; it also seems to possess a certain action which renders it desirable particularly after eating other foods. Caseine is easily decomposed: when the curd of milk is exposed to the air for a few days, at a moderate temperature, it begins slowly to decay, to emit a peculiar odour, and to ferment. When in this state it possesses the property, under certain circumstances, of bringing about a species of chemical change, or fermentation in other moist substances with which it is mixed and brought into contact; just in fact as sour leaven acts when mixed with sweet dough.

Now old and decaying cheese is said to act in this way when taken into the stomach, since it starts certain chemical changes among the particles of food previously eaten, and so promotes the dissolution which necessarily precedes digestion. Some authorities, however, contend that this is not precisely the case, since digestion and fermentation are totally

different operations, and since gastric juice arrests instead of increasing fermentation.

Certain it is, that only some kinds of cheese assist digestion-those being considered the best for this purpose in which some sort of cheese mould has established itself. Hence, the mere eating of any morsel of cheese after dinner does not necessarily facilitate digestion; for if it be too new, or of any improper quality, you are only adding to the load of undigested food already accumulated, and the cheese will have to wait its turn for digestion by the ordinary processes. But that decayed and mouldy cheese does act as a digester there can be little doubt, though in what precise manner it does so is scarcely yet determined; and it is also a remarkable fact that certain cheese moulds, with all the flavour and digestive qualities belonging to them, may be propagated in newer cheeses by a sort of inoculation :-Professor Johnston says, "by removing a bit of the new, that is, from the interior, and putting in a bit of the old in its place."

We learn, then, that cheese contains a considerable amount of nutritive matter; but taken in large quantities is not suitable to any but very healthy persons, whose digestion is strong and perfectly unimpaired. Cheese, as food, can never be good for children, or invalids, or aged persons; much cheese is desirable only for the hardy working man, who gets a better investment for his money in frequent meals of cheese than in regular butcher's-meat; and if you take cheese as a relish, and with a view to assist digestion, by all means choose the old, decaying cheese, which is more likely to effect the purpose than the fresher kinds, which are in themselves more or less indigestible.

MISCELLANY.

delicacy of their flavour; but if you are obliged to keep asparagus for a day or two, put the stalks into cold water. Pick the loose leaves from the heads, and scrape the stalks clean, beginning from the head. Wash them well in cold water, and then tie them into bundles of about twenty each, keeping the heads all one way; cut the stalks even, leaving them about eight inches long. Put the asparagus into boiling