eyes possessed great force. In earlier years,
the poetic period before he had eaten many
dinners and begun to philosophise, his eyes must
have been dominant over all his features, like
the deep eyes of young Napoleon, as you see
him in that French picture riding on the dromedary
in the shadow of the pyramid.

There is an aphorism attributed to the
Emperor Napoleon which was always in the
mind of Mr. Jones: "Men are governed by
their stomachs." He acknowledged the truth
of this assertion up to a certain point. "Eating,"
he would affirm, "is a condition of our nature,
the very basis of our well-being and happiness,
but not the summum bonum of our lives. Its
limitations are too contracted to satisfy the
boundless aspirations of the soul. I challenge,"
said he, "the greatest gastronomists to deny
this. Their science affords them certain cardinal
principles, distinctive flavours recognised
by the palate, to deal with. They have the
power of treating certain constituents in a
pure form, which group themselves under
specific heads; thus, savoury, sweet, acid,
hot, cold, &c.; these are subject to all the
modifying conditions of consistence, proportion,
and quality. Upon this elemental oasis rises the
highest art of cookery, the mixed form, the
blending by certain laws of these distinctive
flavours, producing as the result an harmonious
union, or a totally new flavour. This has been not
inaptly termed the ' thorough bass' of cookery.
Undoubtedly, the mathematician could show
you the possibility of varying these blendings ad
inflnitum, just as the musician can vary sound;
but the palate, far inferior in its sensitiveness,
to the ear, cannot appreciate these delicate
distinctions: after a certain period the originality
of cookery is exhausted."

I well remember the evening when he defined
these limitations of cookery. Like all great men,
he loved to be sometimes alone. I had broken
in suddenly upon his reverie. I saw there were
tears in his eyes.

"Papa Jones," said I — that was my familiar
mode of addressing him—"why do you weep?"

"Behold, my son!" and he pointed to the
table.

There was a singed moth close to the foot of
the candlestick. I knew what he meant; his
sympathy was with the symbolic idea, not with
the individual insect.

"It has ceased to affect me, the moral of
singed moths and skylarks," I replied. "Poets
and philosophers have worked the subject
threadbare."

"The moral is true for all that," said Papa
Jones, mournfully. "Ah me!" he continued, with
a sigh, "why wasn't I content with that?" And
he drew from his waistcoat a white cotton cap,
which he had evidently hidden away when I
entered the room, and placed it on the table.

"Is it possible?" I exclaimed.

Then, in a sudden burst of confidence, he
answered: "I began my life in the kitchen; my
father, my grandfather, were great cooks. The
talk of greatness which fired my young ears
was the greatness of cookery. I was governed
by the ideas which surrounded me. I should
have certainly seized with as great enthusiasm
upon the aesthetic principles of poetry, sculpture,
or painting, had either of those arts been the
object of our lives, as I did of cookery. As soon
as I was old enough I was placed under the
care of the great chef Jerichau. I was his pet
pupil — I was so easy to teach, so enthusiastic.
I would sit alone for hours in my room over
the creation of an entrée. At these times
I have almost fainted for want of food;  all
I had to do was to keep my mind perfectly
blank, and sooner or later the idea would
flash upon me, and then I hurried into the
kitchen to embody it in all its freshness and
spontaneous force. My master was astounded
by the originality of my creations. I was so young
— I was all feeling, inspiration — not one atom of
reflection to mar the force of my conceptions.
Oh, splendid power of youth! without reflection,
therefore without doubt— faith illimitable!"

Mr. Jones saw an involuntary smile on my
countenance.

"Ah," said he, "it's almost impossible for
you to comprehend my feeling for cookery.
What do you understand by the term ' beautiful?'
For my part, I consider it to be a latent sense
of harmony in the soul, which is capable of
being excited by numberless methods, many
paths to a common goal — whether music, by
appealing to that sense through subordination
to its own laws of harmony — or painting, by
submission to the laws of colour and outline —
or science, by revealing to us the harmony of
the laws of nature. I need not multiply instances.
If my theory is correct, it enables us to dispense
with a vast amount of the pity with which we
regard certain avocations of man. That chamber
of the parchment-visaged lawyer becomes
a shrine of ' the beautiful'—the perfect logic
of a fine argument, dry and wearisome to the
natural man, is an inlet to the learned counsel's
sense of harmony—the law books in calf hold
the laureates of equity. In like manner, to the
mathematician, are the laws of numbers and
proportion.

"I don't doubt for a moment" (pursued Mr.
Jones) "but that Lord Eldon and Sir R. Bethell
minister to some men's sense of ' the beautiful,'
just as Raphael and Titian do to others — that
Babbage's calculating machine may produce
exactly the same inward effect as a symphony
of Mozart.

"Cookery had this effect upon me, I felt' the
beautiful' in the harmony of its laws. But after
all, ambition formed the basis of my efforts.
Those words of Napoleon sounded in my ears
like an unconscious prophecy which was yet to
be fulfilled: ' Mankind are governed by their
stomachs.' I aspired to give a power and
influence to cookery of which the world had
never dreamt of.

"My master possessed the highest talent and
the most generous spirit. In a very short time
he declared that I had learnt all that he could
teach—that a European fame awaited me.