scheme must be prepared to incur enormous
liabilities. This no man in his senses will
do, in the present absurd and crippling state
of the law of partnership even to confer
the greatest blessing on his fellow men; for
he would place everything he possessed in
jeopardy, from his bank-stock to his boots.

Here then, is an instance of a most useful
and beneficial project being paralysed from an
irrational and unjust law—a law which exists in
no other country than England: a law which
discourages habits of prudence and saving
among the humbler orders (for it shuts out
every profitable investment from the small
capitalist) and which nips every comprehensive
and beneficent enterprise in the bud.
Mr. Cardwell has promised an alteration of
this anomalous statute; let us hope that
he will keep his word early in the present
Session.

OBSOLETE COOKERY.

THE cookery of mummers and morris-
dancers, of abbots of unreason and licensed
jesters—what can it be but grotesque, like
the rest; full of quaint humour without
elegance, and of gross lavishness without real
luxury ? So, in fact, we find it in Robert
May's queer book; " The Accomplisht Cook;
printed for Nath. Brooke, at the Sign of the
Angel, Cornhill, 1660." Robert May seems
to have been great in his time, in his attempt
to popularise the art and mystery of cookery;
and in his address to the master cooks
and young practitioners—which is as much
a defence as an address—he deprecates the
wrath of the protectionists of that art in
consequence. He takes high ground, though.
He says that though " he may be envied by
some that only value their private Interests
above Posterity and the publick good; yet
God and his own Conscience would not
permit him to bury these his Experiences with
his Silver Hairs in the Grave." An expression
that gives one an affectionate kind of
reverence for the brave old cook—the " artist"
as he calls himself and his confrères. He is
intensely English, among other things. He
abuses the French for their " Epigram dishes,
smoak't rather than dress't—their
Mushroom 'd Experiences for Sauce rather than
Diet," and ungraciously says, that though
"whatever he found good in their Manuscripts
and printed Authours he inserted
in this volume," yet their books were but
"empty and unprofitable treatises, of as little
use as some Niggards' Kitchens: " wherein we
see the shadow of that fatal spirit of expenditure,
the ill effects of which we feel to this day.

We have directions for carving, and the
terms of carving; an account of sundry
"triumphs and trophies in cookery, to be used
at festival times, as Twelfth Day, etc."; the
service (or order of meats); a list of sauce
for all manner of fowls; showing " how with
all meats sauce shall have the opperation;"
bills of fare for every season in the year;
also " how to set forth the meat in order for
that service, as it was used before hospitality
left this nation." And finally a mass of recipes
—and such recipes! Shade of Lucullus! what
clumsy messes, and what strange material!

The directions for carving are very quaint.
You are to break a deer and to leach brawn
(lèche, a thin slice?) You are to spoil a
hen, unbrane a mallard, display a crane,
disfigure a peacock, border a pasty, tire an
egg, tame a crab, tusk a barbel, culpon a
trout, fin a chevin (chub), transon an eel,
tranch a sturgeon, undertranch a porpoise,
and barb a lobster. Also, which is not
exactly carving, you are to timber the fire. ln
the service or order of serving you are to
have first mustard and brawn, then pottage,
then meat, fowl or game, fish, sweets; you
are to have stork and crane and heron and
peacock with his tail on, and larks and
dowcets (custard), and pampuff (pancakes?)
and white leach—which we leave to our
readers to interpret into modern English—
amber-jelly, and then curlews and snites, alias
snipes, and sparrows and martins, and pearch
in jelly, and pettypervis—which is also to be
interpreted according to pleasure and a good
dictionary—and dewgard or dewberries, and
fruter-sage, and blandrells, and pippins, with
carraways in comfits, and wafers and
hippocras. Then you are to have as sauce
verjuice for chickens, and chaldrons—or giblets
very likely—with swan: mustard and sugar
with lamb and pig; sauce gamelin—whatever
that may be—with bustard and bittern and
spoonbill; with cranes and herons, salt and
sugar; with sparrows and thrushes, salt and
cinaon (cinnamon). Sprats is good in stew,
says Robert May; pears and quinces in
syrrup with parsley roots, and a mortus of
houndfish is to be raised standing. Which
last seems to mean pounded or perhaps potted
fish, turned out of a deep dish.

You are to carve cleanly and handsomely,
and not break the meat; you are to lay
the slices in a fair charger generally, and
lace the breasts of poultry with your knife;
you are to gobbin a salt lamprey and
other things, and dight the brain of a
woodcock (gobbin seems to mean, cut up into
small pieces, and to dight is to dress);
you are to roast a porpos and cut him
about; when you unbrane a mallard you
are to lace it down on each side with your
knife, bending it to and fro like waves; and
you are to array forth a capon on your
platter as though he should fly.

But listen to Robert May's description of
"a triumph and trophy in cookery," such as
was " formerly the delight of the nobility
before good housekeeping had left England,
and the sword really acted that which was
only counterfeited in such honest and
laudable exercises as these." You are to make
the likeness of a ship in pasteboard, with
flags and streamers, with guns of kickses