the pressure of the lips, and leave a fragrance
wherever it has rested? In jam, in ices,
crystallised—any way—the strawberry is delicious;
wild or cultivated it is equally admirable and
perfect. No one need fear eating it. Smothered
in cream, it would not have been rejected,
even at Olympian tables. Yet it is a singular
fact that the Almanach des Gourmands of 1805
says: "The strawberry has a delicious but
very strong perfume, which does not please
every one; for which reason, when served round
strawberries are usually mixed with raspberries
and gooseberries." Why, surely the Revolution
must have turned the good people's brains
and disturbed their organs of taste! The man
who dislikes the flavour of strawberries would
be offended at violets, and turn up his nose
at honeysuckles. Yet it is remarkable that,
when preserved, the French often mix the
compote with gooseberry jelly; still they
have the good sense to make of the strawberry,
ices, dragèes, sirop, marmalade, and crystallised
confitures. They have, however, a horror of
eating strawberries freely after dinner.

Nuts!—the very sound of the word sends us
back to broad leafy hedges and crooked sticks,
and to those laughing boisterous searches for
the brown rustling bunches that the squirrels
so envied us. We can imagine a satyr throwing
down a crisp armful of filberts at the white
feet of the wood nymph he loves. The cob-nut,
coarse and generously large; the filbert, fine
and white in the grain as ivory; the walnut,
with a kernel inside its wrinkled shell,
constituted like the folded-up brain inside the
human skull—all are welcome to us and
appreciated. How the quick-turning malicious-
looking earwigs, tumbling from the brown
filbert husks, used to frighten us; and how we
used to wonder how the big fat sleepy maggot
ever got inside the brown barrel of the nut
through that small circular bunghole so neatly
and carefully rounded!

They eat the cerneaux (unripe walnuts) in
Paris with verjuice, salt, and pepper, which has
been sprinkled on them some hours previous
to the meal. They are nice, but indigestible.
It has often struck us (we may here be
pardoned for mentioning) that as green walnuts
make an excellent pickle before the shell
ossifies, possibly green filberts would be also
sweet and palatable, pickled, though not,
perhaps, so fine in flavour.

The peach is one of the most aristocratic of
naturalised European fruits. It should be eaten
on a hot day in Ispahan, just after bathing, and
on the cool edge of a marble fountain. Put on
a green silk and cloth of gold turban, a white
cashmere dressing-gown, a yataghan, and red
turned-up slippers, read a poem of Hafiz, and
then eat a peach; you'll find that will be
something like a peach, and the flavour will be as
different from the ordinary flavour as a potato
eaten from the fingers differs from a potato
eaten from a fork. The peaches grown at
Montreuil, near Paris, are incomparable. They
are overflowing with juice, and their scent
and flavour are not easily forgotten. The
people of that village have grown peaches
for centuries, and they know exactly how to
produce them of a sumptuous size, and of the
fullest flavour. The Mignonne, the first peach
in Paris, appears at the end of July; but the
Téton de Venus, which ripens towards the
close of August, is the queen of all. At Metz
they make a wine of peaches, which, when it is
old, is rather puzzling to the connoisseur, and
by no means despicable. The French cook
peaches "cuites à l'eau comme des œufs à la
coque;" they brandy them as the Americans
do, they dry them, they make ices of them, they
manufacture from them marmalade, a preserve,
and a paste.

Who that has travelled in France, but must
remember those four beautiful families of plums,
the Reine Claudes, the Mirabelles, the Prunes de
Monsieur, and the prunes de Sainte Catherine!
What is so perfect as, what more honied than,
a red freckled sunny greengage on which the
wasps have bitten their custom-house mark of
approval? Honey, indeed, but what honey:
the fruit is a ripe bag of preserve hermetically
sealed, hanging ready to our hand. Nothing
can be more delicious than a Reine Claude in
Switzerland, that has dropped from a hedgerow
tree, and dried in the open sun. The
largest and best French prunes come from
Touraine, and those of Antes and of
Lorraine are also celebrated; the brignoles from
Provence are specially famous; they are small
clear red plums, firm fleshed and sweet.
With the outer skin and the stone removed,
the Mirabelles of Metz are also to be
commended as excellent. The French brandy the
Mirabelles, and the Reine Claudes. Stewed
prunes are delicious and very wholesome. We
must not forget how often Shakespeare speaks
of them, and that Master Slender fought a
master of fence for a dish of them: three
venus making the rub.

But after all what can equal a good pear, for
a real meal of fruit? How it dissolves on being
touched by the teeth! What a flavour it has!
What a vast difference between a melting Swan's
egg, and a Beurré, or a Marie Louise, yet how
impossible to describe the difference in words,
however subtle. How richly mellow a Windsor
pear is, yet how unlike a Bergamot, and still
there is to both flavours a common generic
character. France is the special land of pears,
and French gardeners glory in the doyenné, the
beurré (butter), the Crésyanne, and the St.
Germain. The good Christian, the Rousselet, the
Messire Jean, and the enormous Virgouleuse
are also admirable sorts. For drying and stewing,
they use chiefly the Martin-sec, and the
Catilliard; the dried pears of Reims are also
famous in Paris. The French preserve pears in
brandy, and they use them for marmalade, and
for jelly too, but not often. Persons with weak
digestions eat them with sugar, or half cooked
and then sugared.

Quinces, the fruit of which the Irishman
wished his apple pie to be entirely composed,