Te eae 
1828.] Dr. Granville’s Travels to St. Petersburgh. 399 
agree to pay a fixed sum for the lodging and two or three pounds of grapes 
daily. These should be eaten immediately from the tree, and the only thing 
allowed with it is a small quantity of bread. Those who can walk, are 
recommended to pluck their morning portion of grapes from the trees ; a thing 
easily accomplished, as all the innkeepers have vineyards of their own. The 
second portion, about a pound, is eaten at dinner, or at about one o’clock, and 
the remainder at sunset. The hours for retiring to bed are from eight till 
nine, and the patient rises with the sun. This treatment admits of no medi- 
eine or other article of food with it. The effect of it is, to adopt the lan- 
guage of Dr. Puff, to bring the action of the bowels to a proper standard—to 
quiet every symptom of irritability and nervous excitement—to remove head- 
ache—improve the digestion—procure sound and refreshing sleep—restore a 
proper degree of coolness to the skin and mouth—and inspire the patient with 
cheerful ideas and bright prospects. These miraculous effects of the cure de 
raisins are in perfect accordance -with the best notions respecting the modes 
of treating stomach complaints connected with indigestion. What these com- 
plaints require, is a cessation on the part of the affected organ from all ordi- 
nary operations; in other words, ‘a few holidays from the fatigues of eating 
and drinking ;’ and the cure de raisins is, perhaps, as good a way ‘ to keep © 
holiday,’ as any that can be recommended.” ] 
Our author is much too genteel and exclusive a person to adopt the 
ordinary methods of making himself acquainted with the popular man- 
ners and customs of the people through whose country he passes. Never- 
theless, on one occasion, he does condescend to visit a table d’héte, hav- 
ing learned beforehand that he is pretty sure to meet there “a select 
number of highly respectable people.” The description which he gives 
of the adventure being (notwithstanding its grossiérete) tolerably lively 
and characteristic, we shall present it to our readers ; though we should 
certainly have passed it over in favour of other matter, but for the very 
sensible reflections which the doctor educes from it, and which, coming 
from a professional person of considerable practice, are really worth 
attending to:— 
“T learned, on taking my place at the convivial board, that I had the 
honour of sitting with no fewer than three Barons, Privy Councillors, supe- 
rior employés in the Government, and some military officers. My informant, 
who presided at the table, who was master of the inn, introduced me to those 
who sat nearest. I first addressed one, then another, and at last a third, with 
- the usual introductory observations of strangers willing to enter into conver- 
sation; but to no effect. Either my German was unintelligible, or my 
French too much for them; for I tried both languages. The replies 
were monosyllabic and discouraging, and I was compelled to fall back into 
my character of silent observer. As the dinner proceeded, and the conversa- 
tion, with one exception, became general, a boisterous band of bugles and 
clarionets, enough to startle the whole Thuringian forest, was admitted into 
the room; and the astounding noise they made rendered the voices of our 
te louder and louder still, until it became, at last, animated to the highest 
egree, though no Rhenish wine, but only a single tumbler of cold punch had 
been set before them. Brandishing of knives and forks in the air, as the 
interlocutors studied to enforce by gesticulation their narratives and propo- 
sitions ; picking of teeth with the point of the knife or a pin during.the short 
pauses of affected attention to the adversary’s reply ; spitting across the 
room, and at some distance, on some unlucky piece of furniture ; despoiling 
every plate of the last drop of the savoury sauce, with a morsel of bread held 
between the finger and thumb ; these formed some of the episodes to the more 
general occupation of eating, enacted by these sprigs of nobility and untra- 
velled fashionables. Their shirt-pins, bearing stones of the diameter of a 
