sixty-five sorts to be dressed after each of the
three hundred and sixty-five fashions!

A German writer goes into the etymology
of saiad, and informs us that it is a word
derived from salt. He finds this derivation
very satisfactory, until he is brought to a
full stop by those sweet varieties, like the
sliced apples and oranges, which in his
country are eaten with roast pig. There he
is puzzled. The fact is, salad was in existence
before man. Our boys take pleasure in
a salad dressed by nature, a salad in which
piquant flavours are exquisitely blended.
This is served up in your English meadows,
under the well-known name of sorrel.  The
lower animals eat salad. Beasts and birds
of prey are said to console their stomachs
with grape-husk and salad-herbs. We see
our dogs occasionally seeking for a salad on
the grass-plot. In discussing the geographical
distribution of salad among men — to say
nothing of Nebuchadnezzar who was
condemned to browse on cold salad, we shall find
that in southern Europe whole nations make
salad, all the year round, their chief article
of diet. In Germany and countries with a
German climate, salad, by most people, is
eaten only during half the year, and in
Russia, perhaps, only a tenth part of the
population eat it during a fourth part of the
year. Perhaps it is in France that salad is most
eaten. Napoleon, during his wars, used to
say, that his army wanted nothing to subsist
upon but soup and salad. As for the extreme
North, where vinegar cannot be fermented, it
is a land that knows not salad. The people
there, however, do not feel their loss, for
they eat fish, and with fish a salad is not
wanted. Let me make solemn exception in
the case of soles, which are to be eaten with
sliced lemon by enlightened people. Brillat
Savarin teaches also that baked pike is not to
be thought of without salad. Cold salmon,
moreover, is sent up in France with a
coquettish little salad, which, in this place, it
would be ungrateful to forget.

In a salad, as in the Nature of the ancients,
the number of the elements, is four— the
herb, the oil, the vinegar, the salt.  Eggs,
anchovies, herrings, shreds of dried meat,
gherkins, capers, olives, Parmesan cheese,
slices of lemon, of apple, and of cold potatoes,
bacon, cream, and other things, are added in
various countries, either to conceal a want of
freshness in the herb, or to satisfy a vitiated
palate. Hermes gave but four strings to the
lyre, and the Ætolians banished Anaximander
for wishing to add a fifth. In France and
Italy, and Austria, people are banished or
imprisoned for much smaller enormities than
the unprincipled innovation which would add
a fifth ingredient to salad.. A misfortune
only equal to the infliction of too many
ingredients in a salad, is the possession of too
few. Job accounted want of oil among the
chief trials of his patience. Salad has a
history and a literature of its own, not to be
surpassed by any article whatever—not even the
Greek article.  Josephus simply records that
the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar consisted
in his being condemned to live on salad; but
the Baron von Vaerst, a German writer on
the subject, adds in a shrewd annotation, that
the punishment lay in the wicked king's
salads being unsavoured with oil, vinegar, and
salt.

Plautus ("Rudens," Act the Fourth)
discourses on the privileges and bliss of wealth.
A fisherman finding a cloak-bag in the road,
from which he expects to draw a treasure,
like the girl with the basket of eggs, he
instantly begins to count up the delights he will
purchase with the prize.  But, lo! on opening
the bag, he discovers its contents to be only
flax. How does he express the bitterness of
his disappointment; what loss does he most
deplore? "Farewell," he cries, " ye royal
dishes! thou salad, with vinegar and oil,
whose taste seemed to be already on my
tongue! "Moreover, even the Fathers are not
silent on the subject. St. Antony relates that
St. Hieronymus, who lived to the green old
age of a hundred and five, and during the last
ninety years of his life had been supporting
himself wholly upon bread and water, could
not withstand a certain " lusting after salad."
St. Athanasius attests, also, this very
important fact. The moderns, again, are
enthusiastic upon salad. The Italian poet, Molza,
wrote a long poem about salad. Adam, he
says, ate the first salad in Paradise. He
disdains to compare the warrior's laurel with
the salad of the men of peace. The noblest
of sauces are the hand-maidens of salad; and
if, therefore, a Roman offered once a fortune
to the discoverer of a new sauce, what should
be the prize, he asks, for a new salad?

The subject of salad sauce has occupied the
attention of various learned men, especially
in France. Not only have the specific properties
of salt, and oil, and vinegar, been properly
inquired into, but also their properties and
influences as bearing directly upon herb.
The famous chemists, Fourcroy and Chaptal,
wrote, each of them, a treatise on the subject.
Chaptal wears, in the presence of posterity, a
sweet chaplet of salad leaves. The salad à la
Chaptal must be sprinkled freely with the oil
and vinegar, carefully and discreetly mixed;
finally lightly shaken between two sieves, in
order that all superfluity of oil or vinegar be
suffered to run off. "This done," says the
discoverer, " there will remain upon the leaves
much oil and little vinegar, enough of each,
however, to communicate the true excellency
and delicacy of flavour." This is all very well,
as far as oil and vinegar may go, but Chaptal
has said nothing about salt. The sculptor of
King Charles's statue at Charing Cross is said
to have forgotten the saddle-girths, and to
have put an end to his life in consequence.
Chaptal never discovered his omission,
perhaps; at any rate he did not commit suicide.
The due proportion of salt, however, in a