384 PEOSE HAIIEUTICS. 



calling. ' On a Sunday/ says one of the humbler mem- 

 bers of the confraternityj speaking with infinite bon- 

 homie of a more prosperous dealer than himselfj — 

 ' on a Sunday in particular, anybody would think him, 

 dressed up in his white hat with black crape round it, 

 and his drab palet6t with mother-o' -pearl buttons, and 

 his black kid gloves, with the fingers too long for him 

 — the first nobleman in the land !'* Apicius and the 

 Greek knowing ones threw away the heads, according to 

 the instructions of their physicians, who reckoned them 

 poisonous; nor are our street Apiciuses less' observant 

 of nice cooking, though for more philosophical reasons. 

 ' The boys often come and ask me,' said an eel-pie-man, 

 ' if IVe got a farden's worth of heads ; now I don't sell 

 heads; the women at Broadway, they tells me, sells 

 them at four a farden, and a drop of liquor ; we chucks 

 them away, for there's nothing to eat on them — but boys, 

 though, can eat anything.' Whether eel-broth deserves 

 the fame of another fish beverage described by Pliny,t 

 we know not, but there can be no doubt that a warm 

 cupful at early dawn, in a November fog, must be a 

 wonderful comfort to the working classes in London. 

 Our Gallic neighbours are quite as partial to eels as we 

 are ; ' II est pen d'animaux dont on doit se retracer 

 I'image avec autant de plaisir, que celle de la murene 

 anguille,' writes Lacepede, with all a Frenchman's par- 

 tiality to this friandise ; ' eUe pent ^tre ofierte, cette 

 image gracieuse, et k I'enfance foMtre {vide the infant 

 Hercules strangling a snake or eel), que la variete des 

 evolutions amuse, et &, la jeunesse, que la rapidite des 

 mouvemens enflamme, et k la beaute, que la gr^ce, la 



* See ' London Labour and the London Poor.' 



t ' This had a name to evacuate the belly and bladder, to scoiir 

 and mundify the guts, to purge the reines, to take down the 

 rankenesse of bloud and fat, to be soverraigne for the jaundise, 

 gouts, and ventosities.' — Pliny, Holland's transl. 



