66 



The Review of Reviews. 



THE NATIONS AND THEIR TABLE PLEASURES. 



Ix tlie December Cattury Mr. Henry I. Finck 

 writes very interestingly on multiplying the pleasures 

 of the table. He strongly condemns the conservatism 

 of the American in restricting his appetite to a limited 

 series of dishes. 



THE FRENCH. 



He says that it is to Fran;e cliiefly that the world 

 owes the invaluable lesson which gives to those of 

 moderate means many of the advantages of the well- 

 to-do. In France the humblest peasant family enjoys 

 palatable meals. The essence of good cooking lies 

 in four things — the ability to preserve, develop, 

 improve, and vary the flavour of foods. The 

 French excel particularly in the art of varying the 

 flavour. A small piece of meat suffices them to make 

 a whole pot of vegetables redolent of it. 



THE ITALIANS. 



The F'rench were not the earliest reformers of diet. 

 Their first good cooks came from Italy. Montaigne 

 admired those Italian cooks " who can so curiously 

 temper and season strange odours with the savour and 

 relish of their meats." The Italians taught us to use 

 olive oil for salad, and the art of frying meats and fish 

 in the same oil. 



THE ENGI.1.SH. 



In England, so far as meals are concerned, the car- 

 dinal principle holds sway that every vegetable and 

 every kind of meat must be cooked in sucli a way as 

 to retain its individual flavour : — 



"The roast beef of old England," whicli long ago .iroused 

 the enthusiasm of Henry Fielding, and her broiled mutlon- 

 chops, and steaks, her fried soles, her Yorkshire and plum 

 puddings, turtle and oxtail soups, whitebait, rabbit and other 

 meat pies, deserve the flattery of imitation everywhere. In the 

 matter of bottled condiments and pickles, and biscuits in endless 

 variety, England is also jire-eminent ; and what is particularly 

 commendable is that English products for export are usually 

 made as conscientiously as those for home consumption. You 

 can buy them in a Japanese village, and be as sure of their 

 excellence as if you got them in London, 



THE GERMANS. 



The best cooking in Germany as well as in 

 England is in the jMench style. In cuisine the 

 (Jermans are the most cosmoiiolitan of all peoples. 

 They eagerly learn from all nations, and sometimes 

 improve on the originals. They like variety. It has 

 been justly said that one of the (lerman's chief 

 pleasures in touring is to enjoy the exotic pleasures 

 of the table : — 



A Hcrlln author maintains that tlirce-fourlhs of all Germans, 

 and four-fiflhs of their cousins, the Austrians, talk more about 

 eating than aliout anything else, and th-it the most successful 

 novels in their countries are those in which there are descrip- 

 tions of banquets that make the mouth water. No need of 

 preaching gastronomy to Iheiii. 



KKUITS. 



There are 170 kinds of fruits introduced into 

 America, but the Americans buy only one or two 

 kinds. 'l"he writer urges that a greater variety in 



fruit should be cultivated, and that consumers should 

 insist on fruit being plucked rijje instead of unripe. 

 There is a strong disposition to " ea't with the eyes." 

 \A'e must reconcile eye and palate by breeding fruits 

 and vegetables that conibine good looks with good 

 flavour. 



WHEN A MAN THINKS. 



In the December Tluvsophist Mr. C. W. Lead- 

 beater continues the publication of his serial " A 

 Textbook of Theosophy." In this he sets forth 

 the Theosophical doctrine as to the constitution of 

 man, who is in the first place a spark of God, or, as 

 he calls it, a " Monad," of which the ego is a partial 

 expression for incorporating in matter in order to 

 acquire qualities developed by experience. This ego 

 projects part of himself into the lower world, and then 

 it is known as a personality. It has three bodies : the 

 mental, the astral, and the physical. Most men only 

 live in the physical excepting when they sleep, then 

 they enter into the astral, in which, when fully 

 developed, they become perfectly conscious and 

 remember what they have seen. 



This, however, is only by way of introduction to 

 the extracts in which l\Ir. Leadbeater explains what 

 happens when a man thinks. It is an interesting 

 exposition of the modus operandi of thought, and the 

 influence which it is capable of exerting at a 

 distance : — 



When a man thinks of any concrete object — a book, a house, 

 a landscape — he builds a tiny image of the object in the matter 

 of his mental body. This image floats in the ujiper part of that 

 body, usually in front of the face of the man, and at about the 

 level of the eyes. It remains there as long as the man is 

 contemplating the object, and usually for a little time after- 

 wards, the length of time depending upon the intensity and the 

 clearness of the thought. This form is quite objective, and can 

 be seen by another person, if that other has developed the sight 

 of his own menial body. 



Every thought builds a form ; if the thought be directed to 

 another person it travels to him ; if it be distinctly selfish it 

 floats in the immediate neighbourhood of the thinker : if it 

 belongs to neither of these categories, it floats for awhile in 

 sjiace, and then slowly disintegrates. 



The thought of affection takes a definite form, which it builds 

 out of the matler of the tliinker's mental body. Because of the 

 emotion involved, it draws round it also matter of his astral 

 body, and thus we have an aslro-menlal foim which leaps out 

 of the body in which it has been generated, aiul moves tliroiigh 

 space towards the object of the feeling of afTection. Jf the 

 thought is sufficiently strong, distance makes absolulely no 

 difference to it ; but the thought of an ordinary person is 

 usually weak and dilfused, and is therefore not effective outside 

 a limited area. 



When this thought-form reaches its object it discharges itself 

 into his astral and mental bodies, communicating to them its 

 own rate of vibration. Putting this in another way, a thought 

 of love sent from one person to another involves the actual 

 transference of a certain amount both of force and of malter 

 from the sender to the recipient. .\ man can make a lliought- 

 form intentionally, and aim it at another with the objixt of 

 helping him This is one of the lines of activity adopted liy 

 those who desire to serve humanity. \ stc.idy stream of 

 powerful thought directed intelligently upon another person may 

 be of the greatest assistance lo him. 



