The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-04-25 00:00:00

HE SAW THE ISLES.

HE saw the isles from sea to sea,
And then the stranger said,
•' Where lies that merry England
Of which my youth has read,
Of which our old men talked at times,
When evening's light was on the limes,
And grew so blithe with saws and rhymes
When forest feasts were spread?
"I have seen wealthy England

In mart and mansion fair;
I have seen merry England
In many faces there ;
I have seen of trade the strife and trust,
The toil that turns men's days to dust,
And gold's dull worship that like rust
Into the heart can wear.

4' My father's churches o'er the land
Rise stately, still, and grey,
With the solemn lights and storied tombs

Of the old believing day ;
But there is wane of sport and cheer,.
The morris.dancers are not here,
For steam and change from all the year
Have swept brave youth away."

Some stranger is that England
Which in thy dreams bath been,
Gone with the yule log from the hearth,
The Maypole trom the green,
With subtle prie•t and simple throng,
Viith woodcraft and with shepherd's song,—
For working England stern and strong
It is that thou bast seen.

The fight grows hard and heavy,
By marts, and mines, and waves,
.And many have the laden hours

And more the souls of slaves ;
But when the world at last breathes free,
A merry England men shalt see,
Though long the summer's grass will be
And green upon our graves

FRANCES BROWN.

REVIEWS OF BOOKS.

Table Traits, with Somethin7 on Them. By Dr
Doran. London : P. Bentley.
" He," says a French ~tvan, " who careth not
for his dinner careth not for anything." The
prandial meal, constituting as it does so important
an element in the enjoyment of social and of
domestic life, it is scarcely a matter to excite
surprise that so much study and so much profound
attention should have been bestowed on it. It
has long been a subject of charge against the
English that, notwithstanding their advance in
science and in the practical arts of civilisation,
they are lamentably defective in the art of pre-
paring their own food. It is but as yesterday that
Ude, the prospero of gastromes, bewailed the preva-
lent ignorance and inattention to his science which
characterised the English, and made the great
chef declare, half in indignation, half in anguish,
that, while England possessed five hundred reli-
gions, she had only one sauce—melted butter.
Since that period much has been done to extend
our culinary lore, and the literature of the kitchen
has at length become extensive, and the prosecu-
tion of it is no longer deemed a matter beneath
the notice of a cultivated intellect. The work
under consideration is an admirable illustration of
the last remark. To the composition of a book on
such a subject, Dr. Doran brings stores of erudi-
tion, a lively fancy, and a piquant wit,—combining
with these elements a judicious rationale of the
effects produced on the digestion of different indi-
viduals by different kinds of food, and its varying
modes of preparation. The doctor wisely starts the
consideration of the daily food by glancing at the
matin meal, and offers the following judicious
REMARKS ON BREAKFAST.
It was an old popular error that a pound of butter
might consist of any number of ounces. It is an equally
popular error that a breakfast cannot be unless bread and
butter be of it. Marcus Antoninus breakfasted on dry
biscuits, and many a person of less rank and higher worth
is equally incapable of digesting anything stronger. Solid
breakfasts are only fit for those who have much solid exer-
cise to take after it ; otherwise, heartburn may be looked
for. Avoid new bread and spongy rolls ; look on muffins
and crumpets as inventions of men of worse than san-
guinary principles, and hot buttered toast as of equally
wicked origin. Dry toast is the safest morning food,
perhaps, for persons of indifferent powers of digestion ; or
they may substitute for it the imperial fashion set by
Marcus Antoninus.
From dry biscuits and unbuttered toast for
breakfast, the transition is an easy and a natural
one, which leads us to a consideration of bread ;
concerning which the doctor is learned as well as
eloquent, as will be seen by his observations on
BREAD AND ITS APPLIANCES BY THE ANCIENTS.
Endless were the varieties of bread sold in the markets
at Rome. There was Cappadocian bread for the wealthy,
pugilistic loaves for the athletx, batter bread for the
strong, and Greek rolls for the weak of stomach; and
there were the prepared bread poultices, which people
who, like Pompey's young soldiers, were afraid of injuring
their complexion, were wont to keep applied to their
cheeks during the hours of sleep. Anadyomene so slum-
bering, with Adonis at her side similarly poulticed, can
hardly be said to be a subject for a painter ; and yet many
a blooming Cain slept on the bosom of her Caius, and more
pants madidus than blushes on the cheeks of either.
Pliny ventures on a strange statement with regard to
oats. He says that oats and barley are so nearly allied,
that when a man sows the one he is not sure that he may
not reap the other ! He also illustrates the prolificness of
millet by asserting that a single grain produced " innu-
merable ears of corn, and that a bushel (20 pounds'
weight) of millet would make more than 60 pounds of
wholesome bread 1" The Romans and the Greeks also
appear to have been acquainted with Indian corn.
Our author discourses with much gusto, and no
small amount of good humour, on the cookery of
different nations, enriching his remarks by anec-
dotes as piquant as the condiments he recom-
mends. In a few brief sentences, and without the
parade of set form, he demonstrates the celestials
to be far advanced in the arts of civilised life. This
may be gathered from his picture of
MINIM COOKS AND COOKERY.
The Chinese are exceedingly skilful cooks, and exhibit
taste and judgment in the selection of their food. With
a few beans, and the meal of rice and corn, they will make
a palatable and nutritious dish. They eat horse flesh,
rats, mice, and young dogs. Why not ? All these are far
cleaner feeders than pigs and lobsters. A thorough-bred
horse is so nice in his appetite, that he will refuse the corn
which has been breathed upon by another horse. The
Tonquin birds' nests, eaten in China, may be described as
young Mr. Fudge describes the Paris grisettes : " Rather
eatable things those grisettes, by-the-bye." So are the
birds' nests, composed as they are of small shell-fish and a
glutinous matter, supplied by the plumed inhabitant of
the edible houses. Bears' paws, rolled in pepper and nut-
meg, dried in the sun, and subsequently soaked in rice
water, and boiled in the gravy of a kid, form a dish that
would make ecstatic the grave Confucius himself.
As yet, it will be observed, we have hardly
reached the citadel of our author's stronghold,
" the dinner table and its arranged accompani-
ments." The elegant ease and 'smiling comfort
which surround a well-disposed dinner table are
detailed by him in excellent and captivating taste ;
instead, however, of entering upon that topic, we
shall confine ourselves to an extract, which may
be called
POULTRY AS MATERIALS FOR DINNER.
The Jews, it is said, never ate poultry under their old
dispensation ' • and French gastronomists assert that this
species of food was expressly reserved to enrich the ban-
quets of a more deserving people. About the merits of the
people, the poultry and winged animals generally would
perhaps have an opinion of their own, were they capable of
entertaining one; for nowhere, as in France, have those
unfortunate races been so tortured, and merely in order to
extract out of their anguish a little more exquisite enjoy-
ment for the palled appetites of epicures. The turkey has,
perhaps, the least suffered at the hands of the Gallic expe-
rimentalists, though he has not altogether escaped. The
goose has been the most cruelly treated, especially in the
case of his being kept caged before a huge fire, and fed to
repletion until he dies, the Daniel Lambert of his species,
of a diseased liver which is the most delicious thing possi-
ble in a pie. But'it is ignoble treatment for the only bird
which is said to be prescient of approaching earthquakes.
The
goose saved Rome, and was eaten in spite of his
patriotism. He is skilled in natural philosophy, and his
science does not save him from death and sage-and-onions.
Nay, even a female sovereign of England could not hear of
the defeat of the Spanish Armada without declaring " death
to the geese," until the time comes when Mr. Macaulay's
Huron friend shall be ono fragmentttrs of Black-
friars-bridge, sketching the ruinsg
It must be allowed, however, that the scientific. ladies
of farm-yards have improved upon the knowledgeof theirs
ancestresses. Formerly, of turkeys alone, ful one-half
that pierced the shell perished ; but now we rear more than
15 out of 20. Ido not know, however, that that fact is at
all consolatory to the turkey destined to be dined upon.
Themistocles ordered his victory over Xerxes to be
yearly commemorated by a cock-fight ; and the bird itself
dogs in Rome
WBB eaten out of honour, as were for reasons
of vengeance. At home t.he hen was the favourite bird ;
such quan. that Fannius,
but hens were consumed m
the consul, issued a decree. prohibiting their being slain for
and, in the meantime, the
food durinF a certain period ;
The duck was devoured
Romans invented the capon•
medicinally—that is, on medical assurance that it was good
diet for weak stomachs ; and there were great sages, who
•
not only taught that ducks, as a food, would
in health, but that, if they were ill, the amp
let men
feeding
thereon would soon restore them again. 31-ithridates' it is
alleged, ate it as a counter-poison ; other peppleof other
times and places, simply because they liked it. The rose
was in as much favour as the duck with the diges
Fitted stomachs of the older races. It was the royal diet
Egypt, where the monarch did not, like Queen Eliza-
beth, recommend it to the people, but selfishly decreed that
it was only to be served at his own table. Gigantic geese,
with ultra-gigantic livers, were as much the delight of
epicures in Rome, a
as the livers if not the geese, are now
the roluptas supreme of the' epicure of France, and of
-
+' cod^ A liver