itself to the soul through the eyes. It should
rouse sensations of surprise and admiration,
and crown the enjoyments that commenced with
the removal of the cover of the soup tureen:
that Pandora's casket of a bad dinner: that
joy and triumph of a successful and tasteful
repast.

The dessert is allowed by all French writers
to be Italian in origin. The maître d'hotel,
before the Italian dessert arrived, gloried in
large dishes, mountains of fruit, and sticky
hills of sweetmeats. The elegance was clumsy
and ostentatious. There was no poetry in
it. Paul Veronese's picture of the Marriage
of Cana, will give some idea of the primeval
French dessert. The newer fashion consisted in
those futile trees, and shrubs, and orchards,
and gardens, abused by Horace Walpole; but
Frenchmen delighted in the seas of glass, the
flower-beds formed of coloured sand, and the
little men and women in sugar promenading in
enamelled bowling-greens. This custom had
not been introduced in 1664—1666, when
Louis the Fourteenth gave those magnificent
fêtes at Versailles, of which Molière has left
glowing descriptions. The sand gardens first
appeared in France in 1725, at the marriage
of that miserable and selfish voluptuary Louis
the Fifteenth with Queen Mary of Poland;
and it is said that this princess, brought up in
misery and obscurity in the little town of
Wissenbourg, was delighted with the fantastic
new fashion. It is in the nature of art and
science to advance from conquest to conquest.
Sir Humphry Davy once said, science grew so
fast that even while he was preparing for the
press, his work had to receive constant alterations.
Desforges, father of the author of several
romances, and the comedies of The Jealous Wife
and Tom Jones in London, was the first decorator
of those days. He introduced imitation
foliage, and gave to the frizzled muslin
what was then considered, in the words of one
of his eulogisers, "Un si grand air de nature
et de vérité." To him succeeded another great
creature, De Lorme. De Lorme had not such
profundity of imagination and creative genius,
yet he still found laurels in Paris to harvest,
and what he left ungathered were stored up by
Dutfoy, of the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, who, circa
1805, immortalised himself by forming the
centre of his dessert of palaces and temples of
the severest proportions, of perfect taste, and of
vast extent. Domes, cupolas, huge peristyles,
galleries in perspective, elegant porticoes,
columns, entablatures, architraves, were moulded
by his ingenious and skilful hands. The profiles
were of remarkable purity, the ornaments of
exquisite taste. The appropriate attributes
with which he adorned his temples rendered
mythology an after dinner study, at once
agreeable and instructive. To these temples
this great man added woods and groves (the
trees full of nature), and adorned them with
groups of figures of Sevres. He almost gave
movement and life to these extraordinary
pictures, and, by managing his light and shade with
taste, lent an enchantment to the whole, turning
even a wood of frizzled muslin into a slice of
fairy land.

But the great Dutfoy did not rest here.
Naught with him was done while aught
remained to do. He was exactly like Caesar as far
as that went. He had already ransacked earth,
air, water, to please the senses; he now thrust
his hand into the fire. He sought the aid of
the pyrotechnist, and that artist, roused by friendship
and money, hurried to his succour. He
mixed harmless Chinese and scented fireworks
with his temples and Greek shrines; at a given
signal fire was brought and the carefully
concealed match lighted. In a moment the Temples,
of Dutfoy were the centres of a whirl of coloured
fires; a thousand gerbes darted to the ceiling,
and shed their scented sparks on the astonished
and delighted guests. The noise and fragrance
of this fountain of light, flame, and colour,
produced a surprise undisturbed by the shadow
of a fear, for the sparks in spite of their brilliancy
were so innocent, that even the finest
and most gauzy silks and tissues received no
damage from them. Every one allowed that
Fairy Land, on a Royal birthday, had been
presented to their eyes, and that no more lively and
splendid way of terminating a banquet had ever
been devised.

It was at this same time that sugar rocks
strewn with delicacies, were also fashionable at
desserts, with fruits glacées au caramel, pyramids
of bon-bons, iced cheese, &c. At the
same period a Parisian confectioner won eternal
or almost eternal fame—say six months fame—
by preparing for state desserts, the principal
scenes in the Opera of "the Bards." Ah!
those were times. A confectioner had to keep
his wits about him then, and to be at the same
time icer, confectioner, decorator, painter, architect,
sculptor, and florist. Yes. There was
room for genius then. A dessert might run to
ten thousand crowns.

The dessert is meant for the eyes more than
the stomach. Yet what bright and pleasant
things have been said "over the walnuts and
the wine;" what pretty and gallant compliments
paid as filberts have been cracked! How
agreeable it is on a winter evening to see a
broadside of honest chesnuts bounce and bang
from the lower bar of the grate, what time
the miserable and tepid formality of smuggling
them in, wrapped in a napkin, has been
forgotten for the quiet comfort and enjoyment
of a really friendly party. The dinner is
over, its toils, its glories, are past; we are
now in a flowering prairie of idleness, with
nothing to do but to try fruits, and to sip at
all preserves that are not at discord with our
wine.

Take it altogether (conventional as it is) no
one would wish the custom of dessert abolished.
It is a pleasant little fruit harvest; but the
ladies must no longer be suffered to leave us,
now the three bottle days are gone for ever.
And if English families would only get into the
quiet enjoyable German way of part singing,