which is extremely fortunate. For even on ortolans who could endure
oratory? It also has the advantage of not being illustrated. The
subject of a work of art has, of course, nothing to do with its beauty,
but still there is always something depressing about the coloured
lithograph of a leg of mutton.

As regards the author's particular views, we entirely agree with him on
the important question of macaroni. 'Never,' he says, 'ask me to back a
bill for a man who has given me a macaroni pudding.' Macaroni is
essentially a savoury dish and may be served with cheese or tomatoes but
never with sugar and milk. There is also a useful description of how to
cook risotto--a delightful dish too rarely seen in England; an excellent
chapter on the different kinds of salads, which should be carefully
studied by those many hostesses whose imaginations never pass beyond
lettuce and beetroot; and actually a recipe for making Brussels sprouts
eatable. The last is, of course, a masterpiece.

The real difficulty that we all have to face in life is not so much the
science of cookery as the stupidity of cooks. And in this little
handbook to practical Epicureanism the tyrant of the English kitchen is
shown in her proper light. Her entire ignorance of herbs, her passion
for extracts and essences, her total inability to make a soup which is
anything more than a combination of pepper and gravy, her inveterate
habit of sending up bread poultices with pheasants,--all these sins and
many others are ruthlessly unmasked by the author. Ruthlessly and
rightly. For the British cook is a foolish woman who should be turned
for her iniquities into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to
use.

But our author is not local merely. He has been in many lands; he has