into any details upon oil-cake, linseed,
mangold-wurzel, swedes, parsnips, carrots,
cabbage, barley, malt, grains, pea-meal, gorse,
chopped straw, and other dainties, from
which each feeder selects a fixed combination
of two, three, or four, as the best means of
developing his cattle speedily and well. The
object of the feeder is quite simple; to
produce the healthiest, heaviest, and best
conditioned animal in the cheapest way, and in
the shortest time. If one farmer can fatten
a beast in five years, at sixpence a day, and
his neighbour by spending a shilling a day
can bring him to the same point of
excellence in two years, it is cheaper, of course,
to spend the shilling than the sixpence. There
is added, for that reason, to the list of articles
of food given to it, as written over each ox in
the Show, a statement of the time that has
been spent on its production. To these
considerations of food and time must be added, of
course, a consideration not only of the size
and weight, but of the texture and quality of
the animal itself His fat must not be oily,
and his lean must not be coarse of grain.
There is a short-horned ox here a foot and a
half taller than any of his neighbours, but his
rearing has been costly, spread over five or
six years instead of two or three; and he is
an animal with coarse flesh after all. Big as
he is, the judges pass him over with
contempt.

The study of all these things is promoted
greatly by the Christmas Cattle Show. Baker
Street opens to all farmers a yearly practical
display of the results obtained by all the
systems that are tried among them. The
best method is thus gradually reached. We
have already learnt greatly to improve the
character of cattle, and to multiply their
number. We have discovered, also, how to
put good beef upon ox bones in about half
the time that was spent thirty years ago on
that important business.

We now, therefore, get better beef and
younger, and more of it. The practice of
stall-feeding has, in another way, increased
the food-producing power of the land. The
increase of the number of beasts fattened by
an acre, now that we use green food in aid of
grass, is so considerable, that we may regard it
as equivalent to the addition of a few counties
to the English soil. But it is most to our
present purpose to reflect how, as before said,
the new system has inverted the old order of
things, and having made hung beef a legend,
lays the primest joints upon our dishes just
when we are prepared most heartily to
welcome them—on Christmas Day. It is
good for us, ox beef,

      "

To meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
       When such are wanted."

To the happy thou increasest joy, and even
the sad and lowly diner, who shall have
ordered but a Christmas steak of the waiter
at his dingy chop-house, who can hang his
hat up but for an hour in the decorated
coffee-room,

         "Near the green holly,
       And wearily at length should fare;
       He needs but look about, and there
       Thou art!—a friend at hand, to scare
          His melancholy!"

            MY FRENCH MASTER.
IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE SECOND.

My father insisted upon driving M. de
Chalabre in his gig to the nearest town through
which the London mail passed; and, during
the short time that elapsed before my father
was ready, he told us something more about
Chalabre. He had never spoken of his
ancestral home to any of us before: we knew
little of his station in his own country.
General Ashburton had met with him in
Paris, in a set where a man was judged of by
his wit and talent for society, and general
brilliance of character, rather than by his wealth
and hereditary position. Now we learned for
the first time that he was heir to considerable
estates in Normandy; to an old Château
Chalabre; all of which he had forfeited by his
emigration, it was true, but that was under
another régime.

"Ah! if my dear friend—your poor
mother—were alive now, I could send her
such slips of rare and splendid roses from
Chalabre. Often when I did see her nursing
up some poor little specimen, I longed in
secret for my rose garden at Chalabre. And
the orangerie! Ah! Miss Fanny, the bride
must come to Chalabre who wishes for a
beautiful wreath." This was an allusion to
my sister's engagement—a fact well known
to him, as the faithful family friend.

My father came back in high spirits; and
began to plan that very evening how to
arrange his crops for the ensuing year so as
best to spare time for a visit to Château
Chalabre; and, as for us, I think we believed
that there was no need to delay our French
journey beyond the autumn of the present
year.

M. de Chalabre came back in a couple of
days; a little damped, we girls fancied, though
we hardly liked to speak about it to my father.
However, M. de Chalabre explained it to us
by saying, that he had found London more
crowded and busy than he had expected;
that it was smoky and dismal after leaving
the country, where the trees were already
coming into leaf; and, when we pressed him
a little more respecting the reception at
Grillon's, he laughed at himself for having
forgotten the tendency of the Count de
Provence in former days to become stout, and
so being dismayed at the mass of corpulence
which Louis the Eighteenth presented, as he
toiled up the long drawing-room of the
hotel.