1826. ] fs J 
A MISSION TO THE KITCHEN. 
Que je pulsse toujours aprés avoir diné, 
Bénir le cuisinier que le ciel m’a donné. La Gastronomie. 
AnImAts have been observed to submit themselves to the dominion of 
man, and to yield to domestication, witha facility commensurate to the 
subjection in which their will is held by their appetite. From this fact, 
it has justly been inferred by naturalists that the stomach of man also 
is the peculiar organ of his civilization, and the great bond of union 
which holds the species enslaved in the chains of social order. In 
confirmation of this verity, a thousand circumstances must start upon 
the imagination of the reader.. Stubborn and rebellious characters have 
ever been remarkable for their indifference to the pleasures of the table; 
_and from Esau’s mess of pottage, to Andrew Marvel’s cold shoulder of 
mutton, the whole experience of mankind shews an intimate connexion 
between spare diet and insubordination—between sensuality and submis- 
sion. ‘Let me have men about me,” says Cesar, “who are fat—yon 
Cassius hath a lean and hungry look—he thinks too much; such men are 
dangerous.” The intimate alliance, on the other hand, of “ sound 
learning and religious education,” with abundance of good beef and 
honest port wine, is.a truth known “ lippis et tonsoribus,” to blear-eyed 
gips and college barbers ; and the man must be blind indeed to the play 
of cause and effect, who does not see the origin of the Oxonian tenden- 
cy to passive obedience and divine right in the gaudy days of compota- 
tions of that learned university. In France, this truth is not only under- 
stood but felt—the Ministry openly acts upon the appetites of the cdté 
gauche. Mayence hams and Strasbourg patties succeed, where threats 
_and incarceration effect nothing ; a dindon aux truffes will work a revolu- 
tion in opinions invincible to arguments ; and “ quels diners, quels diners les 
ministres m’ont donnés” is the common refrein of ultras, doctrinaires, and 
of every other class or party in the country, except half a dozen anti- 
_quated precisionists, yclept messteurs les libéraux enragés. In the history 
of our own country, we find that kings and custards went out of fashion 
and came in again together; that a national mortification of the flesh was 
a general preliminary to heresy and rebellion ; that episcopacy fell with 
a neglect of “ creature comforts ;” and that even to the present day it 
is a just reproach to the British population, that they are at once the 
most difficult subjects to govern and the most addicted to bad cookery, 
among the nations of Europe. A learned and pious divine has drawn 
down much ill-will upon his head, by asserting that the people of Ireland 
may be over-educated—an obloquy which he would have escaped had he 
been aware of the true state of the case. If the Irish are rebellious, it 
is not so much because they are over-taught (beaucoup s'en faut), as 
because they. are under-fed—not so much through the prevalence of 
‘hedge-schools, as through the absence of cook-shops ; and even though 
‘it should so turn out that the Right Reverend gentleman is correct in his 
opinion, that education is “ malum in se,” and a provocative to ante- 
ascendancy practices, yet he should have known that, like the foul 
breath of his Sir Roger de Coverley’s barber, the evil may effectually be 
“‘ mollified by a breakfast.” ‘‘ When the belly’s full,” says Sancho, «“ the 
bones will be resting ;” and, on the other hand, flatulencies in the hypo- 
chondria will unsettle les tétes les mieux timbrées. If, therefore, Captain 
Rock’s men really turn out o’nights to do their exercises rather than 
their exercise—to handle pens and not pikes—to seize books, and not fire- 
