CULINARY REFLECTIONS. 335 



of taste in the sultans, we have beheld the Russians at the gates of 

 Constantinople. The Danes, happy under a despotic government, 

 unacquainted with reform or revolution, afford a pleasing picture of 

 lengthened content and tranquillity ; but it is, at the same time, to be 

 recollected, that the dish of grout served up at the coronation dinner 

 of England's kings, has been still preserved amongst its inventors ; 

 and history will have to record, that the first denial of that venerated 

 dish to a British monarch, had place under the administration of Earl 

 Grey. What it will further have to record as the consequence, it 

 might be neither prudent nor agreeable to declare. 



The first important difference relative to our repasts, is the gradual 

 deferment of the hour of dinner, which threatens to justify the re- 

 mark of the Hibernian, " that, very soon, we shall dine to-morrow 

 instead of to-day :" and, it can scarcely be doubted, that previous sto- 

 machic exhaustion can not be otherwise than unfavourable to digestion, 

 and ill calculated to permit the moral powers their free and full de- 

 velopement in that post-pranzatory hour devoted to politics and the 

 consideration of the affairs of state. Hence springs that unfortunate 

 mental delusion so frequently displayed by a certain influential and 

 talented assembly, which produces majorities on questions which 

 would have been in the minority with their fathers : and, as the late 

 hours of nine and ten at night were first brought into fashion by my 

 Lord Grenville, when he assumed office in 1816, without charging 

 them with a culpable intent, it is clear that the whigs considered the 

 posponement of refection until appetite was wearied, as in no slight 

 degree favourable to their measures : but the firmness of George the 

 Third in resisting innovation and midnight banquets, drove them from 

 place, and, for a time at least, averted the dangers of indigestion and 

 reform. 



Should Sir R. Peel return to power, it is to be hoped that he will im- 

 prove upon this hint, for the public safety ; and, in his amendment of 

 the criminal law, a trifling paragraph, rendering it a statuteable of- 

 fence to dine later than four, or felony, without benefit of clergy, to 

 sit down to table by candle-light in summer, might be productive of 

 essential national benefit. Indeed, the Roman catholic countries of 

 southern Europe offer us an example worthy of imitation. There new 

 constitutions and reform have blazed, like a Roman candle for a mo- 

 ment, and then disappeared ; and there, as the angelus of noon is sound- 

 ed, each one recites the heavenly salutation, winds up his watch, and sits 

 him down to his light and frugal meal. The use of knives and forks 

 has been too long and generally adopted to be yet dispensed with ; 

 but whenever a reform of customs be contemplated, it may be fit for 

 consideration, that in the most ancient nation in the world, and that 

 which has best endured, untroubled by change, they are regarded 

 with contempt ; and that two sticks of ivory and ebony with the 

 Chinese, serve all the purposes of our bidental and tridental instru- 

 ments, which had better, haply, have been left to Pluto and Neptune, 

 and the Saturnian age. In the olden and more tranquil times of 

 France even knives were unused, while in democratic Switzerland 

 they were at the same period of general adoption, as we are informed 

 by old Montaigne, who, travelling in the latter country in 1580, ob- 



