506 Life of Count Rumford. 



suspicious of composite fabrics, and prefers to see 

 a whole joint or a cut, which will indicate from what 

 source it was derived. Soup-maigre y the solace and sus- 

 tenance of many a French peasant and household, is 

 an especial horror to an Englishman. Now it is not 

 to be denied that Rumford depended very largely upon, 

 and wrote very largely in the interest of, these lym- 

 phatic and often bilious compounds ; even that word, 

 " compound," seems rather too substantial to be applied 

 to the products of some of his recipes. He did, however, 

 recommend, with great success, the establishment of 

 public soup- houses, where his cheap, but as he con- 

 tended nutritive, if not always palatable, concoctions 

 could be dispensed to the poor. He also sought to 

 induce those who were not needy, and even some of his 

 rich friends, to avail themselves of such public dispensa- 

 tions, with the aim and to the extent of giving them 

 their patronage and approval, so as to be induced after- 

 wards in their own families to practise an economy in 

 the use of what was often thrown away. 



Cobbett chose to represent the Count's devices of this 

 sort as an aggravation of the indifference and heartless- 



00 



ness sometimes disguised under the schemes and meas- 

 ures for relieving the poor. Dr. Johnson's famous 

 definition of oats^ as expressing on the English side 

 of the border the food of horses, and on the Scotch 

 side the food of human beings, was not so sharp as 

 were Cobbett's sarcasms cast upon Rumford's thin 

 soups. He insisted on representing it as an outrage 

 upon Englishmen that whatever the degree of their 

 poverty, and however nearly they approached starva- 

 tion, they should have offered to them, in the name of 

 science and charity, the insipid and flatulent compounds 



