Paris 



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Large handsome pieces were almost constantly on the consider- 

 able tables I have dined at. The variety given by their cooks to 

 the same thing is astonishing; they dress a hundred dishes in a 

 hundred different ways, and most of them excellent: and all 

 sorts of vegetables have a sa\'ouriness and flavour, from rich 

 sauces, that are absolutely wanted to our greens boiled in water. 

 This variety is not striking in the comparison of a great table in 

 France with another in England ; but it is manifest in an instant 

 between the tables of a French and English family of small 

 fortune. The English dinner of a joint of meat and a pudding, 

 as it is called, or pot luck, with a neighbour, is bad luck 

 in England; the same fortune in France gives, by means of 

 cookery only, at least four dishes to one among us, and spreads 

 a small table incomparably better. A regular dessert with us is 

 expected at a considerable table only, or at a moderate one, 

 when a formal entertainment is given ; in France it is as essential 

 to the smallest dinner as to the largest; if it consists only of a 

 bunch of dried grapes, or an apple, it will be as regularly served 

 as the soup. I have met with persons in England who imagine 

 the sobriety of a French table carried to such a length that one 

 or two glasses of wine are all that a man can get at dinner; this 

 is an error ; your servant mixes the wine and water in what pro- 

 portion you please; and large bowls of clean glasses are set 

 before the master of the house and some friends of the family 

 at different parts of the table, for serving the richer and rarer 

 sorts of wines, which are drunk in this manner freely enough. 

 The whole nation are scrupulously neat in refusing to drink out 

 of glasses used by other people. At the house of a carpenter or 

 blacksmith a tumbler is set to e\'ery cover. This results from 

 the common beverage being wine and water; but if at a large 

 table, as in England, there were porter, beer, cider, and perry, 

 it would be impossible for three or four tumblers or goblets to 

 stand by every plate; and equally so for the servants to keep 

 such a number separate and distinct. In table-linen they are, 

 I think, cleaner and wiser than the English: that the change 

 may be incessant, it is everywhere coarse. The idea of dining 

 without a napkin seems ridiculous to a Frenchman, but in 

 England we dine at the tables of people of tolerable fortune 

 without them. A journeyman carpenter in France has his 

 napkin as regularly as his fork ; and at an inn the Jille always lays 

 a clean one to every cover that is spread in the kitchen for the 

 lowest order of pedestrian travellers. The e.xpense of linen in 



