FISH SAUCES. 67 



salted meal ?* How highly the old Romans thought of 

 it maj, he observes, he inferred from their having given 

 the names Porta Salara and Via Salara, — Salters-gate 

 and Salters-way, — to one of the main outlets of the city, 

 by which aU the redundant supplies brought up the 

 Tiberf from Ostia were carried into the Sabine country. 

 Though the ancients had not the glory of decompos- 

 ing salt, they supposed however that it was a compound 

 body made up of different elements, in such close affinity, 

 as not to be dissociable by human means, for which rea- 

 son they selected it as a fit emblem of the indissolubility 

 of friendship. Homer calls it sacred and divine; and 

 whoever ate it with another was supposed to become his 

 henceforth inseparable ally. Hospitality and salt are 

 words contiaually used to express the same idea, ttov aXe? ; 

 TTov TpuTre^ai; ' whereas the salt, where the rites of hos- 

 pitality;' ' setting which at nought, he has become the 

 author of these mischiefs,' says Demosthenes; and to 



* Pliny. Thia reminds us of tliose sacred words, ' Every sa- 

 crifice is salted with salt,' as if the practice was tmiversal, and 

 salt considered as an element essential to its right performance. 



t The salt of Kome is at present monopolized by one or two 

 rapacious salinators, who farm it from Government, and alone 

 fatten, while all the poor of the Papal States are pining for a sup- 

 ply in vain; the article is so dear, that many go entirely without 

 it, while the fiscal waters of the great sea are keenly protected by 

 a vigilant coast-guard, who form a cordon, and pace the shore 

 anxiously, as if on the look-out for an invasion. Amongst the 

 novelties which struck us with most surprise on returning to Eng- 

 land, after a lengthened sojourn in this land of monopoly and 

 misrule, was the prodigality with which our own poor everywhere 

 use salt. When for the first time we beheld our gardener actu- 

 ally dressing the asparagus-beds till they were white under the 

 deposit, we thought of how many hundred hands there were at 

 Kaples which would have rejoiced to pick up a very little of the 

 large quantity that seasoned our ground, to season their unsalted 

 "bread and insipid minestras. 



