grotesque, executing strange and weird dances
with excellent effect, was the chief feature in
this entertainment. The Music Hall songs,
the advertisements, the dances, the
transformation scene, the maltreatment of
Colonel Henderson's force, the Girl of the
Period, and all the rest of it, were as per
regulation.

Pantomime, at all events at the West-
end, offered no special reason for your
Lordship's animadversions. The dresses
of the ladies of the companies, and of the
ballets, appeared no scantier than they
have ever been in Your Commissioner's
recollection. There were plenty of ballets;
for the matter of that there was plenty
of dancing of all sorts; everybody danced;
but there was nothing in any way offensive
to any one not morbidly apprehensive
of being shocked. With the exception
of certain unsavoury business suggested
by a recent notorious Old Bailey
case, and indulged in more or less, as far as
Your Commissioner's observations went, by
every clown in London, there was nothing
suggestive of coarseness. It was obvious that
the causes of your Lordship's now famous
circular must be sought for elsewhere.

SOFT SACKCLOTH AND ASHES.

WHEN public attention has been recently
directed to wonderful observances prevailing in
religious houses—such as the wearing of
penitential dusters on the head, and remorseful
boots round the neck—one is naturally anxious
for more information with regard to similar
usages and customs; and so it comes about
that a certain interest attaches even to the
smallest indications which are allowed to appear,
under Roman Catholic sanction, concerning
the practice of the faithful at special times
and seasons. Under these circumstances, some
amount of curiosity is developed in ourselves,
the heretical uninitiated, by even so small, and
apparently inconsiderable, a thing, as a Cookery
Manual for Days of Fasting and Abstinence.
There are certain special shops (their number
has rather increased of late years in London
and its suburbs), in the windows of which are
exposed various mystic wares, such as china
receptacles for holy water, brazen candlesticks
of mediaeval design, candles elaborately
decorated with colour and gilding to fit the above,
statuettes of saints, miniature censers for
amateur swinging, small prints representing what
are called devotional subjects, rosaries,
crucifixes, little wreaths of immortelles, and other
kindred objects; it is in emporiums of this
kind that the Manual may be easily met with.

Of course the first and most natural impression,
with which one approaches such a work
as the Manual, is a conviction that it will
contain all sorts of ingenious recipes for rendering
the food which it is necessary that those who
are going to fast should partake of, in order to
keep body and soul together, as unpalatable,
and, in short, as nasty, as possible. The act of
fasting, or abstaining, can rationally be engaged
in with but one object, and that object the
mortifying and punishing of the flesh, by
depriving it of what gives it pleasure and
gratification, and so checking that tendency to
self-indulgence to which humanity is prone to
yield. "It is possible to render this dish
exceedingly unpalatable without impairing its
nutritious efficacy, by the introduction of a
small amount of gum of assafœtida;" or "by
mixing a salad with cod-liver oil instead of
ordinary salad oil, its nutritive qualities will be
increased, while all gratification in swallowing
such an amount of uncooked vegetable matter
as it is desirable to consume for the sake of
purifying the blood, will be completely avoided."
Suggestions of this kind one might expect to
find in a work, on the preparation of food
intended for use on days set apart for special
mortification, and punishment of the flesh.

But any simple student approaching the
Manual with such ideas, will be a good deal
surprised after due examination of its contents.
Indeed one would be almost disposed to think,
after a thoughtful perusal of its pages, that the
object with which the work was originally compiled
was that of dodging and evading the obligation
of celebrating certain seasons by engaging
in acts of self-denial during their course.

In plain English, then, this Cookery Manual
for Days of Fasting and Abstinence, contains a
number of recipes for rendering the food—the
consumption of which is allowed by the church
during penitential seasons, simply because the
consumption of some food or other must be
allowed—exceedingly palatable and delicious.
The Manual publishes among its contents a
list of twenty-three soups, twenty-seven "made
dishes," twenty-one "modes of cooking eggs,"
twenty vegetable preparations, thirty-four sauces,
and no fewer than forty-three sweet dishes and
puddings. In all of these cases the attempt is
made to render the article of consumption as
nice as—keeping within the letter of the law—
is possible: while in some cases the directions
given for the composing of certain special
dishes are so suggestive of a delicious result
as positively to make the mouth water. There
is a recipe, for instance, for "a vegetable soup,"
which really reads like something so good that
it should only be studied half an hour before
dinner, and that with a certainty of having
this very soup, and no other, at the beginning
of the meal. It takes thirty-three lines of the
Manual to describe the method of its
construction, so intricate is it; and finally the soup,
after having been seasoned with all sorts of
delicious spices, coaxed into mellowness with
previously fried vegetables, gently stimulated with
cautious simmerings, and then revived with an
influence of mushroom ketchup, is described as
being "as well coloured, and nearly as good,
as if made with gravy meat."