him and Dr. Toadstool, who clearly proved
at the British Association that it was the
grave of a suicide of the time of King
Alfred. I am of a very different opinion ;
being a sensible man and not an antiquarian,
I keep it to myself.

CHIP.

ENGLISH COOKERY.

APROPOS of Common Cookery, which we
have recently dwelt upon, we translate the
following letter of a lady tourist, from a
German newspaper:—

"In the roasting and boiling of their meat,
the English still adhere to the antediluvian
traditions of their forefathers. They take
enormous pieces and fling them into a
kettle, or brown them on a spit so as to
change their outward appearance, the
inside remaining red and raw. The London
hotel-keepers divide their store of meat into
two sections—viz., into steaks which are
broiled for individual customers, and into
joints of such gigantic size that two of them
would suffice to feed all the functionaries
and clerks of the Vienna Hofkauzlei. These
enormous lumps of meat are taken from the
roasting-machine, and, redolent of blood and
gravy, handed over to the guests.

"English gardeners produce beautiful
vegetables; especially cauliflowers, of such
enormous size and exquisite flavour, that I have
never seen or heard of the like in any other
country. But to admire them, is all that is
vouchsafed to the stranger; for everything
green is, in this country, dished up in a
shockingly natural condition. Green peas,
for instance, are not even thoroughly done
they are simply moistened and heated.

"The chapter of puddings I should like to
skip; but for my deep sense of the tourist's
duties. There is a fathomless gulf between
English and French puddings and pastry. In
England, all is awkwardness and stagnation
of ideas, while the French pastrycook is nearly
an artist, and all but a poet. The crust
of London pastry, even when fresh, is
tough, and tasteless; and those sweetly sour
things, rhubarb tarts and puddings, beggar
description. Enormous quantities of this
terrible dish are daily consumed in London,
to the signal dismay of the unintentional
looker-on. When I consider the lamentable
errors of British cookery in this respect, I
fall involuntarily to look for a radical remedy.
The inhabitants of this mighty isle are great
and glorious in everything they undertake,
and I see no reason why they should be so
much behindhand in the culinary department
of household science. Only a few days
ago I met a friend from Bavaria —a man
who had lived there many years in the
British capital. That man's reminiscences
cling, with deep and earnest passion to the
' Dampfundeln ' of his own country, and he
gave me so harrowing an account of his
sufferings ; he spoke so feelingly of the dreadful
qualities of the British puddings, that I
resolved, if possible, to find the means for the
removal of this odious grievance. And I
have found the means. The culinary condition
of the English is so bad, that nothing
but a root and branch reform will ever do
them good. With respect to pastry and
sweetmeats, there is but one way, and
one way only to stem the tide. Let
Parliament decree that a Vienna Mehlspeis
Köchin, or a female cook of puddings, be forthwith
engaged, brought over to England, and
endowed with a salary, which ought at least
to equal the sum which was paid to Jenny
Lind, for the purpose of enabling so
meritorious a female to devote all her energies
to the good of the nation. The money laid
out for such a purpose would bear an interest
in health, comfort, and enjoyment, when no
trace remains of the fabulous sums which
were paid for the warblings of the Swedish
Nightingale."

EARLY DAYS IN DULMINSTER.

I WAS born in Dulminster, and spent my
childhood there; but no more of my life. For
one reason and another, when I look back
from Manhood, London, eighteen hundred
and fifty-six, to Childhood, Dulminster,
eighteen hundred and twenty, it seems
to me that I must have been born at
least a century ago. Yet I lack not a few
years even of such a number as three-score-
and-ten. I can remember only dimly black
scaffolds, files of mourning coaches filled with
men in white hats with crape hat-bands, rows
of men with black flags inarching along;
Radicals, bound for the Town Moor, to
concoct a petition about parliamentary reform.
I can remember, dimly, hearing the guns
fire at our castle, seeing wine in our gutters,
smelling roast ox in the market-place, and
tasting tallow-candle all the evening at
home, when we were rejoicing and
illuminating because George the Fourth was
crowned.

Out of those early days come dreamy
memories of superstition. The streets at
night were dismal; for we had no gas;
and a phantom dog was believed to trot
beside doctors, nurses, and all persons going
to and from the sick. The dog, it was said,
trotted off with a cheerful bark of good-bye
at the threshold, when the patient in the
house was destined to recover; but evil-
omened was its piercing howl. Abed of
nights, as I lay awake, never a dog howled
without telling me that somebody's death-
warrant was sealed. In our Spitalfield,
there was a ring of bare ground, trodden at
night, of course by the fiends. In a particular
field, about a mile and a-half from the
town, there was the ghost of a white lady
who appeared only when the moon was in a