wholesome.  "She openeth her mouth with wisdom,
and in her tongue is the law of kindness.  She
looketh well to the ways of her household, and
eateth not the bread of idleness.  Her children
arise up and call her blessed; her husband also,
and he praises her."

The model kitchen, described by the author
of these little books, needs no immense range,
devouring tons upon tons of coal.  In it, a good
dinner is cooked to the moment, at the cost of a
few pence for fuel.  It is established in any
small room, handy to the dining-room; that
room, for example, which a doctor, if he occupied
the house, would make his surgery; and
everything it contains is absolutely clean.  The
very cloths used in it are washed at home in
clean water, with soda only, and without contact
with yellow soap.  The stewpans are bright;
the dozen saucepans of each required size, from
the butter saucepan to that which is large enough
to simmer an aitchbone of beef, are of fireproof
porcelain; and cookery is achieved also in
porcelain dishes that come, with their contents
uncooled, direct to the dinner-table. There is in one
corner of this kitchen, a china sink large enough
to soak a ham, with water laid on, and a tap to
let it off.  Where gas cannot be had, the American
stove is used; but in towns where gas is
laid on, the model cooking stove should be a gas
stove, to which the heat can be applied and
regulated at discretion, without waste, with but slight
increase of the temperature of the room, and—
not the least consideration—with the utmost
possible saving of waste in the meat.  In such
a home-kitchen, under the skilled care of a lady,
the cold mutton reappears as a delicacy, piping
hot; and the simple dinner of beefsteak and
summer cabbage is set on the table of the thrifty,
cooked to perfection, and so hot that a cold plate
is almost welcome.  Let not the housewife take
fright at the mention of porcelain dishes and
saucepans.  Such cooking utensils are now made
at Dresden, and used very generally on the Continent.
They will not, it is true, bear any kitchen-
maid's rough battering about; but used by
gentlewomen and by well-trained handmaids, they
may last for ever, while the use of them gets
rid of all the labour and dirt of imperfect pot-
scouring.

There can be no doubt that the use of
ladies' kitchens, each fitted with an American or
gas-stove, and furnished upon some such plan as
this, would, in the first place, tend greatly to
the promotion of frugality, and to the bettering
of cooks. The mistress of the household would
not only teach by precept and example, but
would excite curiosity and emulation. Her little
laboratory would be a school of nicety and
cleanliness, and the whole house would reap the benefit
of its teachings: while no cook could stand long
in defence of the old ground of ignorant and
negligent routine in face of the results she
would be seeing constantly produced by the
application of a little study and care to her art.
And there can be no doubt that, in the second
place, where the mistress thus skilfully gives
her mind to the entertainment of her guests,
and is not ashamed of her personal interest
in the results of her own foresight, but, on
the contrary, is proud to have it known that
this or that well-contrived dish has been the
work of her own hands, the Home Dinner is
most surely to be enjoyed in its perfection.
Such a mistress is usually the one who can
make the piano sing, while her neighbour, who
is ashamed of household duty, only beats and
tortures it.  It is the thorough housewife who,
at the head of the table which her skill has
furnished with the best of fare, knows how to
bring a cheerful heart and a sound cultivated
intellect to the elevation of the table-talk about
her: while her neighbour, who is ashamed to be
thought capable, and is grossly incapable, of
household duty, can only produce minced
common-places upon the emptiest topics that happen
to be accounted fashionable by the politer sort
of addle-pates.

Away, then, we say again, with the whole
greasy indigestible sham of conventional dinner-
parties, aping a style inconsistent with the natural
means of the giver.  Let us substitute for it
the Home Dinner everywhere, honest and
characteristic. Who would not exchange a
pretentious mess, diluted with counterfeit wines, for a
hot well-cooked chop, a mealy potato, and a
glass of Bass or Allsopp?  Let the Home Dinner,
of course, so far exceed the daily fare of the
house giving it, as to express with a right
generosity the hospitable mind.  But while the
material expenditure is held modestly within
its just and honest bounds, let the expenditure
of thought be without stint. If ladies studied
cookery as their foremothers did, there would be
no house without its individual recipes and
original dishes.  Some housewives would be famous
for one thing, some for another, and the plague
of sameness would soon vanish from our
entertainments.

What constant variety may, without extravagance,
be introduced into the ordinary meals
of a household, is partly shown in a capital
new housekeeper's book called Cre-fydd's Family
Fare.  It gives a range of varying breakfasts
and dinners for every day in the year, and adds
a store of recipes to show how everything that
is mentioned is to be prepared.  Such a book
would carry any housewife, resolved to become
pleasantly skilled, as she ought to be, in culinary
lore, far on her way.  But the great end for her
to achieve, is such an acquaintance with
principles, and such familiarity with the best-known
combinations in the cookery of food, as will enable
her to run alone.  Her aim should be to work
as the skilled physician works when he has gone
through hospital training, by individual tact
and intelligence applied to every case.  Let it
be her ambition to find three hundred and sixty-
five ways of treating a rumpsteak, all of them
better than the simple use of the gridiron.  For,
if she can do that, she will deserve to have her
name inscribed by that of Shakespeare, and to
have some day her tercentenary kept with a great
Home Dinner, to which all England shall sit
down without quarrelling, everything set forth