windows, yea, and chimneys, in consequence; not to speak of those noble cliffs, rising a sheer two thousand feet in one unbroken sea-wall. Ah! it makes one feel choked and stuffy, here in the smoke-fog of London, to think of those breezy heights, backed by long slopes of velvety grass, where the humble bee -that model vagabond-hiveless and careless, takes his pleasure among the mountain thyme; the eagle circling high overhead, a speck against the grey sky; midway down the babbling sea-birds passing and repassing like restless snow-flakes, and far below all the green Atlantic heaving silently, and bounded westward by cloudland with its peaks, and pinnacles, and hills of blue and gold, like that phantom island which the Arran fisherman sees as he paddles homeward on calm summer evenings. 0. THE RUSSIAN HE dinner-table, rather than the ancient hearth, may in modern times be most properly considered as the true focus of social life; and the aesthetics of all that is conveyed to an intelligent mind by the important word dinner-table, might well form the subject for a long and philosophical inquiry. Indeed, the whole history of civilization may be appealed to, as showing in what manner, from the earliest and rudest efforts, advance has been made to the latest and most perfect form of dinners. Judged by the standard of any one department of human knowledge, civilization will often, no doubt, seem to waver in its onward progress. Sometimes it may appear stationary, sometimes even to be moving in a retrograde direction. This will occur when the art of dining is selected as the guide through the maze of history, as it would with any other particular art. There must have been some charm ing tête-à-tête dinners in Paradise; and the family party of eight who sat down together for so many days in the cuddy of the ark, on their voyage of emigration from * Irish Sketch Book. DINNERS. the antediluvian to the post diluvian world, probably enjoyed themselves more than the Act of Parliament passengers seeking new homes in a modern ship bound to Melbourne or Otago. There have also been impious banquets, as those of Atreus and Thyestes; uncomfortable feasts, like that of Damoclesa type of the modern host or hostess sitting in the consciousness of an untried cook, an inadequate establishment, or an explosive mixture of guests. There have been happy love feasts, and wild banquets of Centaurs and Lapithe; there have been many Banquo's ghosts appearing in divers shapes at many a Macbeth's table. There have been dinners in the Prytanæum at Athens, and dinners at the Old Bailey in London. In a word, there have been good and bad dinners; successful and unsuccessful entertainments in all ages and all countries of the globe. The questions for the wise inquirer are, Why is a dinnerparty good?-why is a dinner-party bad? and these simple questions, before they could get themselves rightly answered, might lead the By W. M. Thackeray. 1859.] Slavery vice Cannibalism—You see your Dinner. votary of truth almost through the whole round of human knowledge. Seriously, however, and to begin historically, and at the beginning(at which there is more merit nowa-days in beginning than an honest and conscientious investigator of truth always gets credit for)-it must be considered how men and women began to eat their dinners, and what they first began to eat for them. In the history of our species as conceived by the late M. Comte, ladies and gentlemen in a nascent state of society habitually used to eat one another; and the institution of slavery in place of anthropophagy was the first great step in civilization. It was discovered by some vast genius, who united the humanity of a political economist with the grand views of a Napoleon, that it would be more profitable for the victor in warfare with neighbouring tribes to convert his captive into a waiter at his table for the term of his natural life, than to consume him at once in the form of a dish, to be served up at a single entertainment. According to this theory, therefore, the first important advance in human civilization may be described as a change of habits, under the influence of which people who had previously always dined upon their prisoners of war, found the dinner-table surrounded by servants, but denuded of the entrées which, under an older fashion, would have been composed of those individuals. It is not clear how society acted during the difficult state of transition which must have ensued. The choice was certainly a hard one to have to make, between a dinner without waiters, and waiters without a dinner; and it is only reasonable to suppose a period during which the new system was not fairly and altogether established in its integrity. Some of the captives would still continue to be eaten; and it may not have been unusual (in old-fashioned houses) to send out a servant to be cooked, and for him to make a partial re-appearance on the plate of a guest instead of resuming his place in his entirety behind his chair. But passing onwards from this very early state of things, upon which even the speculations of phi 463 losophers like M. Comte have failed to shed much light, it becomes necessary to consider what a dinner was, and what an invitation to dinner meant, in those rude stages of the development of the human race of which we do possess some actual glimpses from tradition or history. How full of suggestive thoughts is the word venison here, in its etymological association with the chase of which it is the object. There have been times and places when the invitation to dinner and to the hunting party were one and the same thing. If the sport failed, so did the dinner. The host, pointing to the distant herd of grazing deer, might say to his assembled guests in modern phrase, You see your dinner;' and if they failed to realize that sight, it was as much their own fault as his. One thing, indeed, such a free and easy entertainer tacitly undertook to provide, for which no Amphitryon is now held responsible-namely, the appetites of his party. Every convive must now carry that article with him to his friend's table. That is his affair, providing the dinner is his host's. The excitement of the chase, with all its ventures and exertions, must have communicated an appetite to the least hungry Nimrod, not always perhaps to be gratified; whereas now, on the whole, by a better arrangement, it is the dinner which is certain, and the appetite for it which is not so. The animal, when hunted down and killed, was next roasted whole, and in this way served up au naturel, every hungry man cutting and carving at it with his own weapon as seemed good to himself. There was no distinction of haunches, shoulders, and necks, but the whole animal was presented at once to the general attack of the knives of all the party. What prophet assisting at this rude spectacle could have foreseen the future destinies of deer's flesh, and how in distant times one portion of the carcase only, reserved for the highest honours of the kitchen and table, should divide with the lush juices of a sea-beast the approbation of the most pampered palates of the world. A singular coincidence this!—by which the meat of the swift mammal follows in the bill of fare that of the slow reptile; and the haunch of the stag from Norman forests is the only viand deemed worthy to replace on the table of the City epicure the fins of the chelonian from the Isles of the new Indies! But we are anticipating by many a century, and must return to our deer, ox, or sheep-as the case might be-roasted and sent up whole; and we must continue mentally to contemplate it for a while, in order to become thoroughly possessed of a sense of the barbarity from the remains of which we have been ourselves but recently emancipated. The man who has to carve his own or his friend's saddle of mutton is still suffering, although in a less degree, under the evils of his ancestors, to whom joints were unknown. It will be easily imagined how, with advancing refinement, and under the operation of the great law of the division of labour which accompanies all social improvement, a class of men should arise whose art it should be to divide the dead carcase of the animal, and reduce it to its component members. Whether butchers invented joints, or whether the use of joints introduced butchers, is a grave question in itself. Both, however, appeared on the stage of human affairs; and dinners of meat so far must have assumed much of the outward form under which they have been known to the last few generations of mankind. Alas! what hacking and hewing have we not seen; what disfigurement of the fair lineaments of a handsome joint!-what losses and trials of temper!-what disappointment, what despair! One most just and prominent object of attack upon the arrangements for the British army in the field during the late Crimean campaign, was that every man was in turn expected to act as cook. Was it not equally absurd that every man accidentally occupying a particular seat at the dinner-table should be expected to act as carver? and that in society, as in the army, no education was ever bestowed upon the necessary and important accomplishment? In the last century, our ancestors of that time were wiser in their generation. Learning to carve at table then formed a regular part of the educational curriculum of every young lady. It was the rigid duty of the lady of the house to dispense the principal dishes at table: to press the guests to partake of them, and to carve them so as to make them the most acceptable. Urging to eat fell to the lot of the hostess, while urging to drink was the great office of the host; and the lady would have looked as foolish if she could not bestow what she recommended, as the husband would have done if he failed to produce the additional bottle promised from his choicest bin. But when a change of manners devolved the labours of carving on the lady's male supporters, no provision was made for qualifying them to sustain their parts. Carving, like farming or driving a gig, was supposed to come by nature, and often with equally lamentable results. Bishops' chaplains, generals' aidesde-camp, and judges' marshals, were bound, ex officio, to be competent carvers, and the practice of their duties rendered them tolerably expert. But how the mass of otherwise well-educated gentlemen stumbled and blundered onwards from what was probably their first experience of helping themselves at dinner in hall at college, to the time of sitting at the end of a table of their own, is not to be related. Sorrow and shame it were to tell, The butcher-work that there befell. We know not how matters are now ordered in the hall at the freshman's table of that great college where we fleshed our maiden steel in carving, but unless the university has since founded a professorship for the cultivation of the art, it is to be feared that things are no better than they used to be. From the earliest ages, therefore -or at least from those which closely succeeded them-down to very recent times, the most refractory joints of meat, and birds with the most complicated systems of osteology, have continued to appear at dining-tables, and guests have been dependent on the carving powers of their hosts, or of each other, for their prospects of obtaining access to their food. During 1859.] Horrors of Carving-The Domestic Moloch. this lamentable period of discomfort and imbecility, many great discoveries took place in other departments of knowledge, not altogether indeed unconnected with the subject now under discussion. Old methods of warfare disappeared under the influence of the invention of gunpowder, and game was shot with pellets of lead propelled by it, instead of with bows and arrows. The services of the printing-press became available for the easier multiplication of cookery-books and bills of fare, which previously could only have been known in manuscript. The gigantic powers of steam were, among other purposes, applied to culinary uses the potato felt its influence; and heat was conveyed by it to distant parts of the kitchen for a variety of purposes. Many addi tions were made to the implements of eating and drinking, and every guest came to have his own knife, fork, and spoon. Other luxuries appeared in the train of superior refinement; glass and china took the place of earthenware, and with increasing wealth, pewter-plates succeeded to wooden trenchers; and afterwards silver, in the richer houses, displaced the pewter, which then descended from the parlour to the servants'-hall. The history of the dinner-table would, in fact, be a history of the commerce, national extension, and manners of the people at large; and as trade increased, as new territory was added, as greater general polish prevailed, so would the resources, the variety, and the more refined arrangements of the table advance with almost equal steps. In one thing only there was no real progress-the diner of George the Fourth's reign had to carve his own meat, or have it carved for him by a friend, much in the same way as in the days of the aborigines of Britain. Some changes, which at first sight do not seem to be immediately connected with improvement in this matter, about this time began to open up a dawn of better things, and led the way towards the existing climax of common sense and refinement. The first great improvement of modern times was the retention of the table-cloth during dessert. Let 465 the reader, who is ancient enough, endeavour to recollect the stupid trouble occasioned by the old practice of removing it. Everything, including of course all lamps, candelabra, and ornaments, had to be removed, or held suspended for awhile in mid-air before this process could be effected. The most interesting conversation between two neighbours was liable to be stopped; the most promising flirtation ran the risk of extinction by this interruption. The whole person of an apoplectic butler might be interposed between the talkers, as he shook and perspired in the effort of sustaining with one outstretched arm the weight of some massy epergne, while his fellows, with what dexterity they were masters of, withdrew the cloth from under it. The absurd practice was chiefly maintained from feelings of pride in the appearance of the table, whose cutis vera or true surface was revealed to sight by the removal of its temporary epidermis. Masters and mistresses, no less than foolish old domestics, took an insane delight in the effulgence of the mahogany. It was kept polished, so that you could see your face in it, but at a vast expenditure of time and trouble, and at the price of its being too precious a thing for human nature's daily use. The comfort of servants was sacrificed by the amount of labour exacted from them in the daily rubbings and oilings lavished upon this domestic Moloch. Existence after dinner was rendered miserable by the scrupulous care which had to be taken of it. The very decanters, as they circulated, were placed in stands shod with cloth, to prevent them from scratching the delicate superficies, and, like list slippers worn on the ice, to preserve them from falling on that glassy plain. In short, the table itself had been allowed to become the god or wooden idol of household worship, instead of the altar, as it should be, for the reception of the offerings to be laid upon it. Some convivialists, it is true, affirmed that the persistence of the table-cloth was fatal to jollity. But this must have arisen from habit and old association of ideas. The removal of the cloth was the prelude to the retirement of the ladies, which finally opened the way in The days that we got tipsy in, A long time ago, to deeper and still deeper potations. One pleasant old gentleman, of whose rosy face and old port wine we entertain fond remembrance, would always say that the table looked more sunny and cheerful without its linen integument than with it. He loved the swarthy tint of the tropical wood, and likening the change to a transformation from a winterpiece to a summer scene, he would quote his Diffugere nives,' &c., from Horace, as the servants bore away the snow-white cloth, and would make it an argument for the commencement of serious drinking. But those days are past. The most important consumption of wine now in fact occurs during dinner, and not after it, and the presence of the table-cloth offers no impediment to the briskest circulation of the claret decanter that may be desired. The next step in the modern history of the civilization of the dinnertable consisted in the removal of the joints and birds from the immediate presence of the company, to be operated upon by the servants at a side-table. Whatever required to be carved was placed upon the cloth for a few moments, and only reappeared in portions duly distri buted upon the plates of the guests. It was a long time before inveterate prejudice, and the old love of seeing your dinner,' could be prevailed on to dispense with the idle ceremony of depositing the dishes on the table merely for the purpose of being exhibited for inspection; and apologies used to be made by gentlemen at the bottom of their own tables for not performing in person the ultimate rites of section and dismemberment. But how much more efficiently the deputies in the background almost always performed them, and at how great an advantage of ease and enjoyment to both host and guests! Fortune has her alleviations and compensations, and often the envious man, disappointed of the honour of Occupying a seat on the right or left hand of the lady of the house, might have been consoled by thinking of the labours of carving escaped by him. Distinction had its duties as well as its rights. Who does not remember the fatal dignity of sometimes having to dispense a large turbot, its further side perhaps beyond convenient reach, and the additional grievance if the upper side of the fish was not enough to satisfy the demands on it. Some consideration for the comfort of their guests latterly led masters of houses of a humane disposition to undertake the fish in person, leaving the lighter labours of the soup-ladle to devolve on one of the occupants of the highest seats at the other end of the table. when himself engaged with the róti, and subsequent dishes, it was impossible to exonerate his friends from their own share of the duties supposed to be necessary in that less enlightened age-duties which, it must be borne in mind, differ not in kind, but only in degree, from those previously performed by the butcher, the poulterer, and the cook; whereas the great and only duty of the persons brought together round a dinner-table, is to eat the dinner, and not in any way to assist in preparing it to be eaten. But A well-known epicure who now eats no more, had a favourite various reading of the trite Latin apophthegm. He always quoted it as Stomachus cujusque is est quisque." During dinner, at least, the organ thus exalted to represent the whole individuality of its owner should be treated with the highest respect. No anxious thoughts or responsi bilities should then be suffered to distract it; no cares or anxieties about the distribution of the viands should haunt the brain, the other organ most intimately connected with it. No laborious manual exertions to resolve the problems of -how to cut it, large or small helping, fat or no fat; or that most perplexing ambiguity of-leg or wing -should be permitted to interfere with the serene supremacy of the paramount stomach. Few persons could hope to attain to the sublime tranquillity and philosophy of that unlucky carver whose fate it was to have to struggle with the ever-to-be-detested difficulties of cutting up a goose. His unskilled attempts at length preci |