throw them at each other, and all danger being
seemingly over by this time, you may suppose
they will desire to see what is in the pies, and
when lifting first the lid off one pie, out skip
some frogs, which make the ladies to skip and
shriek; next after the other pie, whence come
out the birds, who by a natural instinct flying
in the light will put out the candles, so that
what with the flying birds, skipping frogs,
the one above, the other beneath, will cause
much delight and surprise to the whole company."
At length the candles are lighted and a
banquet brought in, the music sounds, and
every one with much delight rehearses their
actions in the former passages. "These," says
May regretfully (for the immortal dish was
invented in the reign of James the First)
"these were formerly the delight of nobility
before good housekeeping had left England,
and the sword really acted that which was
only counterfeited in such honest and laudable
exercises as these." Such were the sports at
Whitehall when black-browed, swarthy "Old
Rowley" presided at the table, on which grave
Clarendon condescended to smile, and which
Evelyn and Waller may have watched with
bland approval.

The House of Brunswick brought over sound
Protestantism, but German taste. Cookery grew
cumbrous, dull, and uninventive. A vulgar
naturalism became the fashion with the Germanized
Italian and French cooks of the eighteenth
century. Horace Walpole, great about trifles,
incomparable decider of the width of a shoe
buckle, keen despiser of all follies and
meannesses but his own, neat and fastidious tripper
along a flowery path over this vulgar and pauper
encumbered planet, derided the new fashion in
desserts. Jellies, biscuits, sugar plums, and
creams, simple, unpretending, and pleasant
facts had long since given way to fashionable
inanity, and fashionable rusticity to harlequins,
gondoliers, Turks, Chinese, and
shepherdesses of Saxon China. This was the Pre-
Adamite formation, but these fantastic creatures,
wandering about a desert in a meaningless
way among dry frizzly groves of curled paper
and silk flowers, were soon discovered to be
insipid. By degrees the great minds in the
white nightcaps soared higher (the imperfect
metaphor must be excused), and there
appeared at my Lord Clacklemore's dessert and
at the Earl of Tattleton's dinner table, meadows
full of paper cattle all over spots, sugar
cottages where Damon and Chloe lived when
they were not at the Ridotto, or ambiguous
Madame Cornelys's great masquerade in Soho-
square; pigmy and long-legged Neptunes
in cockle-shell cars domineering over oceans
of looking-glass and rumply seas of silver
tissue. My Lady Fitzbattleaxe, the Honourable
Miss Hoopington, and plain Miss Bluesacque,
came home from Chenevix's and the
India shops, laden with dolls, babies, and little
gods and goddesses, not for their children but
for their housekeepers. Gradually even such
brains as those of Frederick Prince of Wales,
whose chosen companions were Desnoyers the
dancing master, and Bubb Doddington the
toady, began to deride these little puppet shows
that figured in the centre of the Burgundy glasses
and the dishes of maccaroons. The Dilettante
society and fashionable visits to Rome and
Florence awakened expanded notions of art. The
grandeur of size now struck these pigmy dandies.
The ambitious confectioners of the fashionable
squares aspired to positive statuary, spindle legged
Venuses, and barber's dummy Marses, in
affected postures. Walpole mentions a
celebrated confectioner of Lord Albermarle's, who
loudly complained that his lordship would not
breakup the ceiling of the dining-room to admit
the heads, spear points, and upraised thunderbolts,
of a middle dish of Olympian deities
eighteen feet high.

But even this flight of my Lord Albemarle's
confectioner was surpassed by an enthusiastic
contemporary in the service of the Intendant of
Gascony, at a great feast given in that province
in honour of the birth of the Duke of
Burgundy. The nobles of Gascony were treated
with a dinner and a dessert. The latter
concluded with a representation, by wax figures
moved with clock work, of the ceremonial of
the sick room of the Dauphiness and the happy
birth of an heir to the great monarchy.

This reminds us of the over zeal of the late
Duke of Beaufort's Neapolitan confectioner,
whom Mr. Hayward describes as deeply
impressed with the dignity of his art. His grace
was one night in bed fast asleep, and with the
curtains drawn snug, when "he was 'ware of
an excited knock at the door several times
impatiently repeated. Somewhat impatiently the
duke stirred in his warm nest, sat up, pulled
the curtains back, and asked testily who the——
was there?" A voice answered in broken
English:

"C'est moi seulement—it is only me, Signer
Duc. I was last night at the opera, and was
dreaming of the music. It was Donizetti's,
and I have got one grand idea. I rose from
my bed. I invented a sorbet. I have named
it after that divine composer, and I hasten
avec la plus grande vitesse to inform your
grace." This reminds the narrator, from
whom we quote, of Herbault's address to an
English lady of rank, when he hurried to her
hotel to announce the completion of an order
for a turban and ostrich feathers.

"Madame, after three sleepless nights the
feathers are arranged."

The Prince Regent, whose tastes inclined
to a sort of vulgar and spurious Orientalism,
at one of his costly feasts at Carlton House,
had a channel of real water running round
the table, and in this swam gold and silver
fish.

The French epicurean writers say that the
dessert should be the girandole or crowning
tableau of the dinner. It should surprise,
astonish, dazzle, enchant. If the dinner have
fully satisfied the sense of taste and the well-
balanced appetite, the dessert should address