AUGUST 149 



I have made this long extract because it seems to me 

 to throw an exceedingly interesting side-light on the non- 

 cultivation, and above all on the bad cooking, of vege- 

 tables, which extended to a great degree into my child- 

 hood. Even to-day, in spite of the increased quantity of 

 vegetables and their comparative cheapness, it is rare to 

 see them in any variety in English family life ; and I 

 am told that at ordinary clubs Potatoes and Brussels 

 Sprouts represent in winter the vegetable kingdom. 

 What is still more remarkable is that the absence of 

 vegetables has now extended to all the principal foreign 

 hotels, with the probable notion of suiting the English 

 taste. 



In the early Protestant days meat was no doubt eaten 

 with a religious zeal, and the cultivation and cooking of 

 vegetables was utterly neglected. The old gardens of the 

 monasteries ran to ruin even quicker than the fish-ponds. 

 It became a point of national honour to disregard the 

 methods of cooking vegetables which had been brought 

 by the monks, who were men of taste, from France and 

 Italy. Proper cooking alone makes ordinary vegetables 

 palatable, and improves even the very best. The extra- 

 ordinary development of the vegetable, fruit, and flower 

 trade is one of the most marked changes of my lifetime. 

 When I was young, it was impossible in the West End of 

 London to buy any flowers at all in the streets or shops. 

 If we did not winter in the South of France, but remained 

 in London, we had to go to some nursery gardens that 

 lay between Rutland Gate and Kensington in order to 

 buy a few Violets. 



Froude says, about another strange effect of the Re- 

 formation, 'It probably, more than any other cause, 

 stopped the development of painting in England. Holbein 

 had no pupils. Zuccaro left the country in disgust. All 

 portraits that remain were painted by foreigners.' The 



