CLtJPID^. 319 



Only to excite the susceptibilities of a Frenchman's sto- 

 mach, but all his national vanity as well; that innate 

 exorbitant vanity which claims for his country universal 

 supremacy, admitting very little competition ; and own- 

 ing no foreign superiority anywhere, or in anything,- — in 

 the rival achievements of killing men or women by war 

 or gallantry; in science, literature, diplomacy; in the 

 fine arts of sculpture, poetry, and painting ; in the orna- 

 mental ones of dressing, wigging, and perfuming the 

 living body, and in embalming and burying the dead 

 with taste and sentiment ; and finally, in all the useful 

 arts, from transcendental cookery down to humble corn- 

 cutting, and the smoking of a herring : ' Let us who 

 are Frenchmen (loquitur Lacepede), whilst we show our- 

 selves perfectly disposed to render homage where it is 

 due, never forget that although it was a citizen of Bier- 

 vUet with whom first originated the excellent idea of salt- 

 ing and barrelling herrings; a citizen of Dieppe first 

 taught the world another at least equally important art 

 — how they might be smoked/* 



* All assertions like the above, touching tlie first curing of 

 herrings, must be taken with a graia of salt, as a smoky obscu- 

 rity hangs over that interesting epoch ; we do not know indeed 

 for certain when the world and herrings first became acquainted. 

 Dion Oassius mentions that the northern coasts of England were 

 abundantly supplied with fish, but that, owing to some foolish 

 superstition, these islanders never tasted their ' marine stores.' 

 They therefore ate no herrings in his day. Sohnus, a.d. 200, says 

 the inliabitamts of Scotland derived at that time their principal sup- 

 port from fisheries (which we may presume to have been, as now, 

 chiefly clupean). At the beginning of the twelfth century, a great 

 jump in time, there were 'herring-fisheries in the Baltic, to which 

 many foreign vessels resorted;' these herrings must therefore 

 have been salted. In 1290, part of the dried fish shipped at Yar- 

 mouth, in the victualling of a vessel to bring the infant Queen of 

 Scotland from her Norwegian sire, were herrings, and these of 

 course were cured. In 1 385 (Edward III.) mention is made of 



