ner in which the jolly gentlemen of the age proclaim eternal war with Maigre and Lent, the march of fat-folks will, at any rate, keep pace with the march of intellect. Nor, is it to be wondered at, when we consider the great improvement in the art of cookery—which has arrived at such perfection, as to bring within the compass of one stomach, what nature provided for two.

"Plures crapula quam gladius ”—is an old adage; which, in a free translation, means-Cookery depopulates like a pestilence; and we have had doctors disseminating this plague, with as much moral culpability, as illegitimate practitioners have the small-pox. This is no new doctrine; it is as old as the days of Seneca, who says, "innumerabilis morbos mirabilis, coquos numera"-we cannot wonder at the number of diseases, when we recollect the number of cooks! For this reason, a celebrated modern physician, when visiting his opulent patients, never failed to pay his respects to the cooks:-"My good friends," he used to say, "accept my best thanks for all the kind services you render us physicians; were it not for you and your pleasing poisons, the Faculty would soon find themselves inhabitants of the workhouse."

But let us speak with reverence of an art that is as old as King Cadmus, and let us recollect that Henry IV. of France was often in the kitchen; that a corps of missionary cooks have been considered the most powerful emissaries to convert the Brahmins, and that when the devil himself sends us a plague in the shape of a bad cook, infernal malice can go no further. Que je puisse toujours après avoir diné, Bénir le cuisinier que le ciel m'a donné.

Were we inclined to philosophise on this subject, we should say-that the portly show-the beautiful rotundity of Burkeand the serpentine line of Hogarth-which exist in the fat worthies of this day, compared with those of former times, are in proportion to the superiority of modern over ancient cookery.

The bon vivant of our time turns shocked and disgusted from the black broth, pulse, and meagre fare of the ancients; and his refined taste bestows due contempt on the patriot who could dine on turnips! Agesilaus, Lycurgus, and Cincinnatus, may

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have been brave and wise-but would Brummel wish to dine with them?

Athens was little skilled in the higher branches of cookery; -and even imperial Rome considered quantity more than quality. Lucullus, Apicius, and Cælius indeed deserved to have lived in the days of turtle, French sauces, and Kitchener-the great culinary censor of the age. He was, indeed, the "Oracle of Cooks." No man ever possessed a tact of palate more certain, more delicate, or more infallible. He fed with the gravity of a senator-and tasted with the zeal of an artist, whose whole gustatory organs were employed in promoting the progress of his art. In the profundity of his reflections, he usually took three or four hours to digest a peptic precept, or solve a dinnerproblem. Hence his opinions became oracular. From his decisions respecting whatever appertained to the art of alimentation, there was no appeal. His opinion constituted law; and should it ever be possible to form a collection of such decisions, it will be hailed as the Epicurean code of the age.

In these days of philosophical fancies, we read a man's history and character at a single glance. As a craniologist will tell you his good or evil propensities-so a physician, by the expression of his visage, will say what he dines upon—and, moreover, (what may not be generally known,) that our personal beauty depends upon eating and drinking; the ugliness of the Calmucks being solely owing to their feasting on raw flesh,an alarming piece of news to all eaters of (half-dressed) beef, and a convincing proof of the importance of cookery. In truth, as many of our best physicians, and some of our ablest modern surgeons, have demonstrated "that a healthy state of the body depends on the due regulation of diet," the importance of judicious cookery must be very evident. Nay, the philosophy of some have carried them so far, as to conjecture that not only the health of the body corporate, but that the safety of the state is connected with this art. Ill-concocted viands not only produce commotions in the human bowels, but

"Convulsions and heats in the bowels of Europe:

for it is an axiom sanctioned by the highest authority, that welldigested opinions are the product of well-digested viands, and

vice versá―from which it will appear, the domestic ordering of diet is as important a matter of administration as the Material medica; and that the Roman general who boiled his own turnips, would, if he had had a cabbage to boil, have boiled it in two successive waters, as he had doubtless discovered that vegetables were "fade" and flatulent, unless freed from much noxious matter by culinary process.

Cicero says "old age has no precise or determinate boundary," and many philosophers have thought, that men might live, like the patriarchs of old, for centuries, if they took proper means. Proper means! What do they mean by proper means? The answer is-cookery and diet.

"Caro animata cur vivit et non putrescit ut mortua? Quia quotidie renovatur." SANCTORIUS.

Hippocrates, the great father of the medical and chirurgical art, laid much stress, and wrote largely upon diet. But, during the last century, medical men thought it necessary to apologise for treating on these subjects: since, however, local complaints have been found to be intimately connected with constitutional influences, surgery has taken an enlarged sphere, and they are now entertained as both proper and pleasant.

Fashion, which holds an undivided empire over the frivolous concerns of life, extends its influence even to the healing art. Thus we find fashionable complaints-fashionable remediesfashionable seats of disease-and fashionable plans of treatment. Half a century ago," nervous complaints" were the ton. These were superseded by "liver complaints,"-and these again have yielded the palm to "stomach complaints.' "Duodenal com

plaints" are beginning to be talked of in London-while the hypochondriacs of Bath have their fashionable localities: so that, at present, the seat of alimentary complaints depends on the accidental circumstance of the patient's residence.

Formerly, we sought the phenomena of insanity in the head and brain-the causes of cough in the lungs and pleura ;—but, "nous avons changé tout cela," we look into the head for the causes of hooping-cough, and for the causes of insanity we search the bowels and stomach. In fact, the stomach is charged (now a-days) with one-half the complaints of mankind; and, amongst others, the complaint in question, viz.

Obesity-notwithstanding some fanciful properties given to the colon, as to the secretion of fat. Sir Anthony Carlisle says, that long-continued experience has taught him that the first effects of senility are to be traced to the stomach, and that many incipient disorders are to be sought for in the evidence of the stomach, and its dependencies.

During the reign of nerves, camphor-julep and cordials were in vogue. When the popular hypothesis about the liver prevailed, mercurial drugs were lavished in a manner that made Dr. Reynolds predict that calomel would be taken by the teaspoonful. "Peptic precepts" perhaps prevented it. The chylopoietic functions put in their claims; and then every body suddenly discovered that they had a stomach! "Don't you think," said an hypochondriac to me one day, "that dyspepsia has wonderfully increased of late!" adding, at the same time, "By the bye, what is dyspepsia?"

Although gastric disorders and gastric doctrines at present engross the thoughts and employ the pens of all denominations of persons, yet they are by no means novelties. The stomach has been the subject of complaint from the earliest ages. The rich man has complained that his stomach would not allow him to eat any thing: the poor man, that it ate every thing, and was never satisfied.-And the good Erasmus complained, that in spite of all his Catholic propensities, his stomach would be Lutheran ;—and, moreover, a very learned and ancient physician specifically treated this affair, in a grave work entitled "Ventriculi querelæ et opprobia." In truth, it has been satisfactorily proved, that in every stage of human life-health and disease-pleasure and pain—and even life and death, are dependent on the functions of the stomach.

An old English adage says, "it is the stomach makes the legs amble, and not the legs the stomach." Shakspeare knew its importance and powers well: Fontenelle magnanimously avowed that there was no enjoying life without a good one-" pour bien jouïr de la vie il faut avoir un mauvais cœur, et un bon estomac ;" -and Serenus Samonicus many centuries before says,

"Qui stomachum regem totius corporis esse
Contendunt, vera niti ratione videntur."

In the vagaries of modern philosophy, it contends for the seat

of the soul; and naturalists have gone so far as to make it the organ of civilization, from the fanciful hypothesis, that animals submit to domestication in proportion to the subjection in which their will is held by their appetite: certain it is, that the stubborn and rebellious are remarkable for their indifference to the pleasures of the table; and that "short commons" and insubordination are uniform, as cause and effect, upon the principle, no doubt, of Sancho Pancha's reasoning-that "when the stomach is full the bones will be resting."

The variation in the capacities and powers of living organsthe peculiarities and deviations from the ordinary course of the human constitution, or what has been termed idiosyncrasy, particularly as relating to the stomach, affords much amusing "materiel."

We find sometimes very stout, strong persons, particularly Northern cousins, from some peculiar idiosyncrasy, or some meagrim in the chylopoietic functions, cannot endure certain of the most agreeable and innocent articles of food ;—thus fish, flesh, fowl, butter, cheese, bacon, and good red-herring, each in its turn, is despised and loathed. It puzzles philosophy to account for some of these whimsicalities. As for instance, why a man six feet high should faint away at the sight of a shoulder of mutton; why another tall gentleman should have muttonic aversions so great, as to be able to point a mutton-pie, as a pointer would a partridge ;-while a third "Herculean delicate," minces his meat, and puts aside all fat, gristle, and skin, with the fastidiousness of a puny school-girl.

Another peculiarity that excites our astonishment, is the variety in the capacity and power of the stomach, which enables one man to swallow the whole of another man's grievance,for there are those who would eat an entire shoulder of mutton in as little time as his anti-muttonic neighbour would be recovering from the sight of it*. Much of both these evils arises from the error of early education, and the force of habit; and both are to be controlled, or at any rate moderated by the will, as might be illustrated by some singular examples.

It is recorded on the tombstone of James Parsons, buried at Teddington, March 7,1743, that he had often eaten a whole shoulder of mutton and a peck of hasty pudding.