FOOD FOR THE PEOPLE. 
735 
“ France is at the present time draining our markets of 
second-rate horses, and this not only makes such very dear, 
but the prices of nearly all other kinds have advanced in con- 
sequence. It is not, we think, likely that there will be a 
return at any time to the prices of some years back. The 
continued prosperity of the country has so greatly increased 
the demand for horses, and although it may seem strange, 
the breeder of them is not induced even by this yearly 
increase in the demand, to meet it by an increased supply. 
The fact is that the percentage of good, sound, valuable 
horses, which can be brought to market at four years old — 
they are rarely kept in the hands of the breeder now until 
they are five — is very small, and the many risks which the 
breeder has to encounter amongst his young horses so often 
lead to direct loss and disappointment, that there is no need 
to wonder he is contented to provide less in number and to 
demand greater prices, when he is able to present c bloom 
and fashion* to the dealer.** 
FOOD OF THE PEOPLE. 
It is much to be desired that what may be called the phi- 
losophy of eating and drinking should be better understood 
and more fully acted up to. Though eating and drinking 
are acts which, under penalty of death, nobody may evade, 
yet how few of us perform these important tasks under a 
proper appreciation of the exact object we set to ourselves in 
doing so. Curtly stated, we eat to make blood ; we drink to 
quench thirst and to promote digestion. We feed our vital 
furnaces for the same reason that an engineer feeds the fur- 
nace of his steam-engine — to keep up the fire ; but a foolish 
and utterly reprehensible sensuousness thwarts the indica- 
tions of nature, until the consideration of what is best for 
blood formation and thirst assuaging, is dominated by the 
care that such and such a meat, and such and such a drink, 
shall be agreeable to taste and smell. Lord Macaulay has 
somewhere remarked that the cooking economy of a people 
is determined in the first instance, and then regulated, by the 
nature of its fuel and the mode of consuming it. As regards 
ourselves (English) the truth of that dictum is fully borne 
out. Roasting, boiling, broiling, and frying, are operations 
that accord with our Cyclopean system of fuel non-economy, 
and a few changes having been rung on the national primitive 
four, the culinary resources of a typical English cook are at an 
end. Now, as poor Soyer long ago remarked, nothing, in the 
