of barbarism and darkness, preserved, in the solitude of their cloisters,
whatever of Roman luxury and classic dainties have come down to this
later age. We will drink to the Carmelites at a sect, but we will drink
also to the monks as a body. Had we lived in those days, we had been
monks ourselves."

"It is singular," answered Lord Guloseton--"(by the by, what think you of
this turbot?)--to trace the history of the kitchen; it affords the
greatest scope to the philosopher and the moralist. The ancients seemed
to have been more mental, more imaginative, than we are in their dishes;
they fed their bodies as well as their minds upon delusion: for instance,
they esteemed beyond all price the tongues of nightingales, because they
tasted the very music of the birds in the organs of their utterance. That
is what I call the poetry of gastronomy!"

"Yes," said I, with a sigh, "they certainly had, in some respects, the
advantage over us. Who can pore over the suppers of Apicius without the
fondest regret? The venerable Ude [Note: Q.--The venerable Bede--
Printer's Devil.] implies, that the study has not progressed. 'Cookery
(he says, in the first part of his work) possesses but few innovators.'"

"It is with the greatest diffidence," said Guloseton, (his mouth full of
truth and turbot,) "that we may dare to differ from so great an
authority. Indeed, so high is my veneration for that wise man, that if
all the evidence of my sense and reason were on one side, and the dictum
of the great Ude upon the other, I should be inclined--I think, I should
be determined--to relinquish the former, and adopt the latter." [Note:
See the speech of Mr. Brougham in honour of Mr. Fox.]

"Bravo, my lord," cried I, warmly. "'Qu'un Cuisinier est un mortel