the dancing and merriment, which had sustained a brief remission, had recommenced, when, far above the din of the dance and the music, one shriek, and then another, was heard in the direction of the river. Hearken the shout,' said one rustic; 'the bridegroom is fairly over the water now then, hey, play up the runaway bride. Alas, answered another peasant, Yon is not the cry of pleasure, but the shriek of agony my kale-yard to the Johnstone's land, but they are fallen into the Deadman's-plump, and Judith's prophecy's true.' The hall-door seemed much too narrow for the multitude who rushed to get out. The shrieks were repeated; and, mingling with the shrieks, and at last o'er-mastering them, was heard the downward dash of Annan-water, which, swollen sud

denly with distant rains, descended from the hills with all its increase of waters, lifting the ice before it, and heaving it on the banks with a crash that resounded far and wide. The unhappy pair were seen struggling together against the overpowering element, which, encumbered with ice and trees, filled the channel from bank to bank, and rushed down six feet deep abreast. No effort could be made to save them; and when the river subsided in the morning, they were found in a distant eddy, the bridegroom's left hand round his bride's waist, and his right hand held out like one in the act of swimming. They lie buried together in the old Kirk-yard of Dryfesdale. I have often seen Judith sitting weeping on their grave." Lammerlea, Cumberland.

PRAISED for ever be thy obstinate virtue, merry old England: for, to this hour, hast thou magnanimously contemned the vanities of cookery. No, the specious miracles of Italian science, the bedizening of Monsieur Very's coquinarial millinery, has no charms for thy downright simplicity of stomach. Thou hast set thine honest face against the proselytism of beef and mutton into ragouts, soups, and other mysterious disguises; and wouldst hold no communion with the rash inventors of metaphysical dishes, and their disciples. Honest, unsophisticated food, such as his father throve upon, will John Bull stand up for, to his last breath. Next to the glories of roast and boiled, I prize the culinary history of my native country. The Romans, when they came over to look for pearls, found us in possession of choice beef and mutton; "multus numerus pecoris," is the expression of Cæsar; and I may as well add here, the testimony of another foreigner-Voltaire, who thus historically speaks of us in the reign of Elizabeth:De leurs troupeaux feconds, leurs plaines Henriade.

sont couvertes.

Horace, Epist 6. lib. 1.

All that the Romans could do, could not induce our ancestors to look straight at one of their cooks. Roasting and boiling required no great clerkship to understand them. We were not very choice; but we fed copiously and satisfactorily, and cared for no man. It was no uncommon thing, in those days, for a young princess to take her turn at the spit; and a commander-in-chief was not ashamed to exchange his truncheon for a basting-ladle. Who would not envy them the natural beauties of their unpremeditated dishes? what palate would not long to snatch a taste of the rude energy of their extempore dumplings? In these primitive times, two meals was the order of the day; but every man brought to the table a full-grown appetite. There was then no hypocritical earnestness in the countenance and action of a guest, to justify his praises of the viands; no fraudulent concealment of the morsel of which he would seem to have legitimately disposed. The sincerest interest in the business in hand, pervaded the industrious circle; and till repletion gave the

alarm, never did hands or jaws "give o'er their functions." Eating was then the most important concern of life. Nothing in the way of politics or morals (as has since been the case) could be effected without a feast. A treaty of peace, or the adjustment of a village quarrel,-a marriage, or a campaign, was not undertaken, as in the Roman times, without a savoury sacrifice, proportioned to the occasion. Cæsar observes, that neither hares, hens, nor geese, were used at the tables of the Britons. The Druids, in excluding these articles from consumption, did no great violence to the taste of the people. Their preference was fixed upon beef; and that national dish, whose pedigree has been calumniously dated from Henry VIII.'s time, owes its birth to the free and early adoption of the Britons. After the extinction of the druidical superstition, the prejudice against poultry continued; and it was in vain that the example of the Romans recommended to us the use of the cuckoo and the peacock, the latter being but recently brought under the attention of that people, at a feast given by Hortensius the orator, to the clergy of Rome. The Saxons, with a judgment worthy of their high character, concurred in, and even improved upon, the British choice. They broke through the effeminate practice of parcelling out limbs and steaks; and setting at nought the dictates of an illiberal discretion, they made the table groan, not with the disjecti membra of an ox, but with the mighty length and breadth of that noblest of quadrupeds, "one entire and perfect." The Danes are said to have communicated to us the art of gormandizing. I do not think this assertion has been well considered; the only advantage which I can find they had over the natives was, that their bill of fare included the article of horseflesh. The Conqueror, owing to the sedulous and well-directed efforts of the royal purveyors, was a very corpulent man. The circumstance is authentically known to us, in consequence of its having been made the subject of an unlucky joke by

the King of France. William kept his bed for some days, and was informed, that Philip had inquired if he was not yet delivered of his great belly. The angry monarch vowed that ten thousand lances, instead of the usual tapers, should attend his churching at Nôtre Dame; and he made good the pledge conveyed in this metaphorical threat. The return of the great religious festivals was celebrated chiefly by feasting. Great piety, and a love of eating, were by no means incompatible things. Christmas was a period the most favourable to the indulgence of the one and the other; and it was by no means un common for a very devout man to die of a surfeit. Easter was not such a time for gormandizing: the good folks, however, insinuated good cheer into that festival; and it was generally acknowledged, that the only secure way a man had to show that he was no Jew, was to pay his hearty respects to a gammon of bacon. We are told of a feast, at a great castle, that happened in those times, which lasted from three o'clock in the afternoon to midnight; and to the luxuries of which, six remote cities of the East contributed their choicest products. This was a time of innovation on the simple and substantial national meal.Henry II., I am afraid, was partial to the cana dubia, which nature and morality alike condemn.-He vindicated his lineage by his fondness for cranes: during his expedition to Ireland he astonished the natives of that country, by the number and variety of his dishes,-the titles of some of which only have reached us, such as karumpie, dellegrout, &c. Indeed, William of Malmesbury marks his sense of the growing luxury of the times, in terms of the most justifiable wrath. Richard II. was a monarch of very liberal notions upon the subject of eating: not a man less than 10,000 a-day called for meat at the kitchen of the royal household. The Earl of Lancaster distinguished himself amongst the nobles, by the most honourable profuseness. He devoted about 100,000l. a year, modern currency, to the manly expenditure of his table. Edward III. ridi

culously enough, thought to lower the average, of consumption, by the enactment of sumptuary laws: the first violator of them was his own son, Lionel of Clarence. The marriage of this prince was celebrated by thirty exquisite courses; and the fragments of the wedding feast fed no less than one thousand very hungry people. In this reign it was, that the Earl of Warwick (Neville), one of the greatest fathers of eating that England has seen, rendered himself so beloved by the people, in consequence of the grand scale of his entertainments. Stow mentions, that whenever he came to London, he kept such a house, that six oxen at a breakfast was considered very moderate indeed! It was usual for the great barons of those days to feast their retainers in the halls of their castles. Nor should we insult the memory of our ancestors, by supposing that their entertainments, like those of the Romans, were mere titular feasts, where a man was expected to eat and drink a good deal less than he spoke and listened.— They did not esteem it of so much importance to inquire, with whom, as upon what, they dined; and never made the ridiculous mistake of calling for a catalogue of guests instead of a bill of fare. Such an officer as an Anagnosten was never heard of in England. The usual two meals a-day were now split into four, the latter escaping under the gentle title of a livery. An unhappy love of variety (as great an enemy as disease to the ability of the stomach) then gathered force. The Archbishop of York, at his installation feast, left to his guests the range of 104 oxen, 1000 sheep, 2000 pigs, and a due proportion of other constitutional commodities. The day might have lived in our admiration, but for an unlucky appendix of 104 peacocks, and 400 swans. But, oh, the revolutions of tastes! The ordinary breakfast of an earl and his lady, we are told, in those days, consisted of bread, meat, (salt-fish, on days of abstinence), beer, and wine! You might offer any sum for a lady subject to the vapours, without the least risk of losing your money.

The

more ambitious part of the nobility permitted the introduction of fancifully-manufactured pastry at their dinners. The most venerable characters in paste were sacrificed without mercy; sex or age was not spared: and one common death awaited a demon and an angel. The accession of Henry VIII. ought to be marked in white by all the lovers of good-eating. It was in his reign that the policy of suppressing_the system of purveying began to show itself in the glowing and pathetic sirloin, that rendered us the envy of all our neighbours. The fear of the purveyor, it would seem, caused the remarkable neglect of ox-breeding, in the early part of our history. In a remonstrance to Edward I. by the barons, clergy, and commons, of the great hardships imposed upon them by aids, tallages, and contributions of provisions, the necessity of supplying salt-beef seems to go nearest to their hearts. In Henry II.'s time an ox was worth but three sheep; before that, it was never valued at more than six. The extinction of the race of purveyors allowed the greatest attention to the feeding of the ox; and consequently, in the reign of Henry VIII. the ox, on the average, was worth fifteen sheep. Families of distinction lived chiefly on salt-meat and fish during winter, with which they consumed inordinate quantities of mustard. Happily, the rage for cooks had not yet been introduced. The Earl of Northumberland, as appears by his household book, employed but two cooks, for a retinue of 200 persons. Fowl, which had been forbidden to any under the class of lords, did not form a frequent dish even at their tables; although the list of poultry, as well as other dinner articles, was signally increased in this reign, as appears from the authority of the following verse:

Turkeys, carps, piccarel, and beer,
Were brought into England, all in one
year.

In consequence of a temporary famine about this period, the common-council of London, by a formal order, confined the Lord Mayor