The Press.
London, England, 1854-05-13 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

in that language. However, in that respect he is certainly
superior to those who are reduced to the necessity of making
a cross for their signature.
Count Nesselrode owes his successful career to his wife,
the daughter of Gourieff, Minister of Finance, who was
very ugly, but very rich—very intellectuai, and very in-
fluential, in consequence of the position of her father.
Having been refused, on accountof her plainness, by several
Russian Eiegants—Count Moussin Pushvin among the rest
—she offered her hand to Count Nesselrode, whose abilities
she esteemed, and whose career she undertook to advance.
She also played a prominent part in the administration of
foreign affairs ; so much so, indeed, that it was generally
supposed it was she who directed her husband. That
suspicion, however, was only true so far as regarded the
distribution of offices. Whoever incurred her displeasure
was sure to fail, and whoever was fortunate enough to
deserve her favour might calculate upon promotion. A
certain method of obtaining it was by little gifts which
betoken friendship. She was particularly fond of objects
of fine art—pictures and statues. Her death gave hopes
of the fall of her husband, but nothing came of it, and
proof was soon afforded that she was not the pervading
spirit of his acts. There was even more impartiality in
the bestowing of offices. The count does not much like
changing his o.mp/uyis, but remains constantly faithful to
the same. For the rest, of all Russian ministers, he is the
most illiberal in his rewards to his subordinates.

Count Nesselrode is not now considered as a diplomatist
of the first order, and that is not only the result of his sub-
ordinate position with regard to the Czar, but of his natural
talents. Metternich and Pozzo di Borgo are justly placed
above him.

There are, says M. Golovin, three political
sections into which the thinking part of the
Russian people is divided—the old " Rus-
sians," headed and represented by Menschi-
koff, opposed to the adoption of European
customs, and to an extension of Russian power
westward, but strongly, and even fanatically, pa-
triotic; "young Russia," which aims at social
and constitutional reform, framed on the pat.
tern of Western Europe ; and the " Slavo-
philists," a party whose ideas and objects are
not very clearly set forth, but who seem to
combine a desire for national progress with a
strong dislike to copy any foreign model.
Aloof from all these stands the corps of Ger-
man employes, whom the Czar prefers to his
Muscovite subjects, partly on account of their
greater diligence in business, partly also be
cause, having no personal or patriotic interest
in the empire, they form more ready and obe-
dient instruments of his will. German officers
are especially unpopular with the army : their
exaggerated ideas of discipline, unconciliating
manners, and extreme severity in the infliction
of punishment, earn them the hearty detesta-
tion of the Russian soldiery.

Table Traits, with Something on Them. By Dr.
Doran. London : Bentley.

" THERE are upwards of seventeen works ex-
" tent on the subject of diet and digestion,"
writes Dr. Doran,—an evidence, we think,
that men study the first much more than the
second. The cook or the appetite is to blame
much oftener than the stomach. Papers on
gourmandism, when seasoned with wit and
anecdote, read pleasantly enough, and exhibit
it under an attractive aspect ; yet its extrava-
gances have an ugly aspect if surveyed too
closely, and we would hope that there is more
of affectation than truth in the favour with
which some of our youngsters profess to re-
gard it.
Dr. Doran's book, as its title indicates, is
chiefly made up of anecdotes, tending, however,
to the illustration of useful rules. He begins
with the classical story of Amphitryon, and
ends with the lamentable decay of the author
of the " Almanach des Gourmands." Some-
times our author's information is apocryphal.
" Rebecca and Jacob," we are told, " ate of
" a pottage in which the meat was cut into
" small bits before the muscular fibres had
" cooled and become hardened and stewed
"in milk thickened with meal and herbs."
The tradition must be curious which has pre-
served these minute particulars.
One of Dr. Doran's earliest chapters is on
water, to which marvellous efficacy has been
attributed at different times for the cure of
diseases. Water-doctors were more in favour
with the luxurious citizens of imperial Rome
than they have have yet attained with us.
" Patients resorting to Charmis to take cold
" baths in winter under his direction were re-
" (Diked to pay him a consulting fee of $OOl.
Ho was the first water-cure doctor that ever
pract ised. and he realised a fortune such as
" his successors may aim at in vain." Pru-

S4TIIIIPA

dent people manage to reap all the advan-
tage of bathing without such costly superin-
tendence. The late Vice-Chancellor Sir Lan-
celot Shadwell was an indefatigable bather:—
Every morning throughout the year, during his resi-
dence at Barnes Elms, he might be seen wrestling joy.
ously with the Thames. It is said that, on one occasion, a
party, in urgent need of an injunction, after looking for
the judge in a hundred places where he was not to he
found, at length took boat, and encountered him as he
was swimming in the river. There he is said to have heard
the case, listening to the details as the astonished appli-
cants made them, and now and then performing a froltck•
some " summersault," when they paused for want of
breath. The injunctiou was grunted, it is said ; after
which the applicants left the judge to continue his favourite
aquatic sport by himself.

A chapter on corn follows that on water.
American ingenuity has discovered a novel
purpose to which the staff of life can he put.
We extract the passage for the benefit of gen-
tlemen troubled with tight boots :

None of its uses are so singular as ono to which corn
was applied, some thirty years ago, in the western settle-
ments of America, namely, fur stretching boots and shoes.
The boot or shoe was well filled with con►, and made secure
by such tight tying that none could escape. It was then
immersed for several hours in water, during which the
leather was distended by the gradual swelling of the grain.
After being taken from the water, a coating of neat's-foot
oil, laid on and left to dry, rendered the boot or shoe fit for
wear.

The " materials for breakfast " suggest to
our author some amusing stories. Here is
one illustrative of French manners under
Louis XV. which reads like a page from a
lively romancist

One afternoon that M. de Saint Foix was seated at bis
usual table, an officer of the King's bodyguard entered,
sat down, and ordered " a cup of coffee, with milk, and a
roll," adding, "It will serve me for a dinner!" At this
Saint Foix remarked aloud, that " a cup of coffee, with
milk, and a roll, was a confoundedly poor dinner." The
officer remonstrated ; Saint Fax reiterated his remark,
and again and again declared, that nothing the gallant
officer could say to the contrary would convince hint that a
cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was not a confoundedly
poor dinner. Thereupon a challenge was given and ac-
cepted, and the whole of the persons present adjourned us
spectators of a fight which ended by Saint Foix receiving a
wound in the arm. " That is all very well," said the
wounded combatant; " but I call you to witness, gentle-
men, that 1 am still profoundly convinced that a cup of
coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner!"
At this moment the principals were arrested, and carried
before the Duke de Noailles, in whose presence SaiutFoix,
without waiting to be questioned, said, " Monseigneur, I
had nut the slightest intention of offending the gallant
officer, who, I doubt not, is an honourable man ; but your
excellency can never prevent my asserting that a cup of
coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner."
" Why, so it is," said the duke. " Then I am not in the
wrong," remarked Saint Foix • "and a cup of coffee,"—
at these words magistrates, delinquents, and auditory burst
into a roar of laughter, and the antagonists became friends .

Mention is made of a beverage new to
an English breakfast-table, we believe, but
worth trying :

I must not omit to mention, that the favourite beverage
of Voltaire, at the Cafe Procope, was " choca,"—a mixture
of coffee (with milk) and chocolate. The Emperor Na-
poleon was as fond of the same mixture as he was of chain-
bertin: and, in truth, I do not know a draught which so
perfectly soothes and revives as that of hot, well-frothed
" choca."

Good tables, like necessity, make men ac-
quainted with strange company. What but
an excellent dinner,—that social cement of
our time,—could have brought together such
a party as one of our Coalition Ministers re-
cently managed to assemble?—

A trait of the customs of this country is presented by
the dinner given in February of the present year by Earl
Granville, the guests at which were Lord Aberdeen, the
Bishop of Oxford, and Mr. Bright. There were not such
startling contrasts at the reconciliation dinner which
brought Wilkes and Johnson together as at Earl Gran-
ville's unique banquet. The host and the Premier repre-
sented—the first smiling courtesy ; the second, the most
frigid severity of a freezing civility. But the strongest
contrast was in the persons of the Bishop and the " Friend"
—Dr. Wilberforce, highest of Churchmen, briefest of
preachers, and twice as much curled as the son of Clinias
himself ; while Mr. Bright, with every hair as if a plummet
depended at the end of it, hating the Church, but not in-
different to petits path a la braise, must have looked like
the vinegar of voluntaryism that would not mingle with the
oil of orthodoxy. To have made this banquet complete
there should have been two more guests—Dr. Cumming
and Dr. Cahill, with appropriate dishes before each.
Some gourmands have held that a good
dinner is but spoiled by company:—
The late Duke of Norfolk need habitually to dine at
one of the houses in Covent•garden, out of pure liking to
it. He was accustomed to order dinner for five, and
to duly eat what he had deliberately ordered ; but, as
he one day detected a waiter watching him in his gastro-
nomic process, he angrily ordere•.l his bill, and never en-
tered the house again.

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