shade, which are far greater beautifiers than
the fierce glare of the foot-lights, and the
whitening and unnatural effect caused by
artificial lights of all kinds. As there are
fine days in an English summer, attempts at
the rustic and sylvan drama are not quite
hopeless. Anything which tends to popularise
open-air amusements will be highly
beneficial, and is not wholly impracticable.
Our forefathers almost lived out of doors.

Although great concessions have been made,
of late, in England, in the opening of public
parks and art-repositories, yet we are still
deficient in the means to bring the refining
influences of what is beautiful and gratifying in
nature and art to the people, instead of making
the people, at an expense of labour and money,
go to them. More public gardens and covered
spaces, more beautiful flowers, more good
music and paintings, more sculpture
distributed over our public buildings, and,
permeating the hard business of life, would be,
we are persuaded, of great moral benefit. The
Great Exhibition building, when converted, as
it will doubtless be, into a winter-garden, will
cause, we trust, a wide dissemination of cheap
pleasures. Let us hope that similar glazed
promenades will be set up in other localities.

We cannot revert from public to domestic
relaxation and pastimes without placing eating
and drinking amongst the foremost of them.

We know that there is a surpassing
disinclination to acknowledge the pleasures of
the table to be pleasures; but who can deny
that they are, when moderately indulged?
In the present constitution of our code of
cookery, eating is the most expensive of our
amusements. This arises mainly from our
neglect of vegetables. About the middle of
last summer, at Kreuznach, near the Rhine,
we partook plentifully of a certain dish at
the table d'hôte. It was delicious; some
titled English travellers were present, who
seemed to be equally charmed. Curiosity was
awakened. What could it be? The German
gentleman in waiting, napkin in hand, was
despatched on a special mission to the chef de
cuisine to know what we had been eating.
After remaining some five minutes in suspense,
the receipt was revealed. It was a dish of
pea-shells, stewed in butter, with a sprinkling
of savoury herbs. Pea-shells are the ordinary
diet of pigs on this side of the Channel; but
in Germany, a little skill, a little butter, and
a little herb removes them from the sty to
the best dinner tables.

"The capacities of vegetables are mournfully
misunderstood, sir, in England! " said a
plethoric old gentleman next to us, who had
already been fed by our cookery within a
beef-steak or two of apoplexy. "Look at
me, sir; you never see a foreigner in such a
state as I am; but what with light wines and
this kind of thing—(swallowing a mouthful
of pea-shells)—I hope to get better."

Our fat friend was quite right; a more copious
use of vegetables and simple salads would
prevent a great variety of diseases which have
been produced by food of too stimulating a
character, not sufficiently mixed with vegetables.
Yet we grow the finest vegetables in the world.
The only places in London where one can be
always sure of a fresh salad, are kept by
foreigners. If our cooks only knew what
exquisite and delicately flavoured soups are
to be made of herbs with a little butter, and
perhaps an egg, and how very far they go to
make a satisfactory dinner, soups and potages
would not be so neglected. There are, we are
told by competent authority, no less than
three hundred and sixty-five ways to dress
eggs, but with herbs as helpmates. A foreign
cook, by the help of a sprinkling of parsley, or
sage, or fennel, a little butter, and some eggs,
will dress you a dinner fit for Lucullus, at
something under sixpence a head. When it
is said that living is cheaper abroad, it is
not meant that the articles of consumption are
on the whole cheaper, but there is better
economy. We have seen a few broad beans
boiled, mashed, and made into light
vegetable patties, that would astonish Lovegrove,
and do credit to Soyer. In a French dish
often seen at the Palace de Bourbon, we
should scarcely recognise our common
Jerusalem artichoke; while the metamorphoses
which potatoes may undergo, are more
marvellous than those of Ovid. The old judge
Brillat Savarin, in his witty cookery book,
the "Physiologie du Goût," affords data
about spinach which make one's mouth
water. Of the grey peas which we give to
cattle, the Spaniard makes his famous
"puchero." A dish called kouskousou, of flour
and water, is the staple food of Western
Africa, from the Soultan to the Kif; and
throughout the whole East, the greater part
of the population lives on a dish nearly similar.
Cold cauliflowers are the delight of the
Italians, and an onion dipped in oil (an
aliment more powerful than digestible) with a
little brown bread, is the chief food of the
picturesque sailors who man the felluccas of
the Levant, and smuggle on the coasts of
Portugal and Barbary. Lastly, the plains of
Hungary and the mountains of the Tyrol
grow as proper men and women, and as
beautiful, as are nurtured on the banks of the
Thames—yet their chief diet is of vegetables.

The subject of cheap drinks is illimitable.
There are drinking shops in Boston and New
York which give the thirsty their choice, at a
minute's notice, out of three hundred different
sorts of beverages. Yet not one of them is
forbidden to Temperance pledgees. A French-
man or an Italian, with a glass of sugar and
water, price a penny, is as happy as an English-
man with a glass of grog, price one shilling.
Though by no means, a powerful kind of drink,
eau sucrée has its restorative and invigorating
properties. During the last bombardment of
Algiers, a French general, in the heat of his
enthusiasm, scaled a height to command a good
view of the enemy's operations. He had