494 Life of Count Rumford. 



tastes, self-denying in, or rather unconscious of, such 

 appetites, and more easily satisfied with frugal, plain 

 diet than most men, while he was also positively hostile 

 to all banqueting. The reader will naturally feel that 

 his author can hardly deal so .minutely as he does with 

 these provocatives of sense without putting in some 

 disclaimer for himself. And he will find such a dis- 

 claimer at the close of the eighth chapter of the Essay, 

 where the Count, after having described an appetizing 

 process for a steak or cutlet, adds : 



" I imagine it would be an excellent dish, and very whole- 

 some ; but it must be left to cooks and to professed judges of 

 good eating to determine whether these hints (which are thrown 

 out with, all becoming humility and deference) are deserving of 

 attention. For although I have written a whole chapter on the 

 pleasure of eating, I must acknowledge, what all my acquaint- 

 ances will certify, that few persons are less attached to the 

 pleasures of the table than myself. If, in treating this subject, 

 I sometimes appear to do it con amore, this warmth of expression 

 ought, in justice, to be ascribed solely to the sense I entertain of 

 its infinite importance to the health, happiness, and innocent 

 enjoyments of mankind." 



An interesting reference is made to the habits of the 

 Chinese, for the sake of an example which the Count 

 thinks his own countrymen might imitate. 



1 The portable kitchen-furnaces in China are all constructed 

 of earthenware ; and no people ever carried those inventions 

 which are most generally useful in common life to higher per- 

 fection than the Chinese. They, and they only, of all the 

 nations of whom we have any authentic accounts, seem to have 

 had a just idea of the infinite importance of those improvements 

 which are calculated to promote the comforts of the lowest 

 classes of society. 



* What immortal glory might any European nation obtain by 

 following this wise example ! 



