But even to fireworks there is an end, and as
the last rocket shot forth its stars, we ran to
the gate, leaped into a droschky, and drove at a
rattling pace homewards.

The next day, late in the afternoon, I went
again to the Hermitage alone. The Bower of Vain
Delights had a forlorn look; dead leaves strewed
the walk. Blackened squib-cases floated on the
lake, below the tawdry pasteboard mountains.

In the stables, an enormous elephant swayed
to and fro, and undulated his proboscis. In
the court-yard, a tame bear lamented angrily his
blindness. The empty stage looked disconsolate
as a house after a funeral. The roof of artificial
leaves rustled in the cold air. The tawdry
triumphal arches seemed to shrink away from
the honest daylight, that is so frank, and so
disdains shame and concealment of all kinds. I felt
like the magician's boy in the Indian fable, who
unwittingly has repeated the spell that has turned
his father's palace into a poverty-stricken hovel.

OYSTERS AND OYSTER CULTURE.

THERE are aristocratic and plebeian oysters,
suited to the pockets as well as to the palates
of their admirers, and amongst the former our
natives are pre-eminent in flavour as well as in
price. This distinction has long prevailed,
Phillips, who published in the reign of Anne
a poem, the name of which is disclosed in the
following lines, declared

    Happy the man, who void of care and strife,
    In silken or in leathern purse contains
    A splendid shilling; he ne'er hears with pain
    Fresh oysters cried!

The democratic, or deep-sea oysters, principally
from the Channel Islands, earliest take
the field in London, the Colchesters next
become visible, while the high-bred or "melting
natives" from Milton, Whitstable, Faversham,
and other localities on the Kentish coast, wait
to see the grouse and partridge seasons pass,
and come in with the pheasants in October.

The old English line which has become a
proverb, "In the R'd months you may your
oysters eat," is a mere translation of a Leonine
rhyme of the Middle Ages
    Mensibus erratis,
    Vos ostrea manducatis.

The natives are reared from the developed
spawn, technically termed the spat, which is
transplanted from its birthplace to feeding-
grounds appropriated to this privileged class;
for, like other fashionables, they are believed to
improve by changes of sea air, and become
metamorphosed from all fin and no fat, to all fat
and small fin. They thrive best in the artificial
beds of sheltered bays and estuaries, and improve
most in the neighbourhood of fresh-water
springs. The greenish colour which the fins
sometimes present, is acquired by exposing the
adult oysters in shallow pools to the sun's rays,
and probably, in some measure, arises from the
absorption of the microscopic shoots of delicate
marine plants, rendered more tender by the
action of the waves, and tinged by the influence
of light. The natives are not full grown until
between five and seven years old, and as we
learn the age of a horse out of his own mouth,
that of the oyster is disclosed by annual layers
on the convex shell. Oysters possess distinct
organs of digestion, respiration, and circulation,
with a well-defined nervous system. They are
sensible of light, and close their valves at the
shadow of an approaching body, so that the
undulation of the waters may not reach them.
When brought to Billingsgate, the natives are
subjected to sanitary treatment by being placed
in vats of sea-water, or of water holding a saline
mixture in solution, to which oatmeal is added,
a process which tends rather to increase their
fat than improve their flavour.

When the native is in perfection, the fish
should approach the roundness of a ball, and be
white as the kernel of a nut. According to
Kitchener, the barrelled oysters are commonly
the smallest natives not full grown; but perhaps
he goes rather too far in asserting that all
the objections which exist to the use of unripe
vegetables, apply to immature animals.

Geological researches constantly reveal the
long-entombed remains of well-shaped and full-
grown fossil oysters, which make us regret that
such dainties came into the world before their
time, and to little purpose. The oyster-bank in
the vicinity of Reading, in Berkshire, an inland
county, is a most remarkable deposit, occupying
six acres, and forming a strata over two feet
deep. Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester,
whom Johnson honoured with a life amongst the
British poets, published in 1667, in his History
of the Royal Society, an original paper, in which
he complained that, "although British oysters
have been famous in the world since the island
was discovered, yet the skill how to set them
aright has been so little considered amongst
ourselves, that we see at this day it is confined
to some narrow creeks of one single county."
That county was, of course, Kent. Essex
has since become a competitor, the Burnham
oysters from the river Crouch being highly
prized; indeed, the Kentish bishop, in his zeal,
would seem to have forgotten that, in the days
of Queen Bess, Colchester sent presents of
oysters to the royal favourites, Leicester and
Walsingham. The Romans were great admirers
of oysters, and early learned the excellence of
those from the Kentish coast. Juvenal alludes to
the discriminating taste of the court sycophant,
Montanus, at the feasts of the Emperor Domitian,
in lines which have been thus paraphrased:

                                                              Who
     At the first bite each oyster's birthplace knew,
     Whether a Lucrine or Circæan be had bitten,
     Or one from Rutupinian deeps in Britain.

A Roman millionnaire, Sergius Grata, whom
Cicero designated the master of luxuries,
conceived the idea of originating an oyster-park in
the Lucrine Lake, a salt-water lagoon on the
coast of Campania, adjoining the Gulf of Baiæ,
and separated from the sea by a narrow strip or