444 Of Food. 



tity of it will be sufficient for that purpose, provided it 

 has a strong taste, and is properly applied. It should 

 be grated to a powder with a grater, and a small quan- 

 tity of this powder thrown over the soup after it is 

 dished out. This is frequently done at the sumptuous 

 tables of the rich, and is thought a great delicacy ; while 

 the poor, who have so few enjoyments, have not been 

 taught to avail themselves of this, which is so much 

 within their reach. 



Those whose avocations call them to visit distant 

 countries, and those whose fortune enables them to 

 travel for their amusement or improvement, have many 

 opportunities of acquiring useful information ; and, in 

 consequence of this intercourse with strangers, many 

 improvements and more refinements have been intro- 

 duced into this country. But the most important advan- 

 tages that might be derived from an intimate knowledge 

 of the manners and customs of different nations — the 

 introduction of improvements tending to facilitate the 

 means of subsistence, and to increase the comforts and 

 conveniencies of the most necessitous and most numer- 

 ous classes of society — have been, alas! little attended 

 to. Our extensive commerce enables us to procure, 

 and we do actually import, most of the valuable com- 

 modities which are the produce either of the soil, of the 

 ocean, or of the industry of man, in all the various 

 regions of the habitable globe ; but the result of the 

 EXPERIENCE OF AGES respecting the use that can be made 

 of those commodities has seldom been thought worth im- 

 porting! I never see maccaronim England, or polenta 

 in Germany, upon the tables of the rich, without lament- 

 ing that those cheap and wholesome luxuries should be 

 monopolized by those who stand least in need of them ; 



