Table traits, with something on them

Among well-worn illustrations and similes, there are few that have been more hardly worked than the above line of Poquelin-Molière. It is a line which tells us pleasantly enough...

As we have said, “moderation” is the first principle of digestion; and as, according to the Latin proverb, “water gives moderation,” it behoves us to look for a few minutes into...

Franklin, who made a “morality” of every sentiment, and put opinions into dramatical action, has a passage in some one of his Essays, in which he says, that “Disorder breakfasts...

Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, was honourable in one; namely, in exempting from arrest for debt all persons engaged in the cultivation of land, “with intent t...

What Bishop Berkeley did with “Tar Water,” when he made his Essay thereupon a ground for a Dissertation on the Trinity, Joseph Williams--“the Christian merchant” of the early an...

Ferdinand Cortez went to Mexico in search of gold; but the first discovery he made was of chocolate. The discovery was not welcomed ecclesiastically, as coffee was. This new sub...

The old coffee-houses were not simply resorts for the critics, the politicians, and the fine gentlemen. Gay, writing to Congreve, in 1715, says, “Amidst clouds of tobacco, at a...

If Sybaris was the paradise of cooks, Lacedæmon was their purgatory. They were blamed if men grew fat on their diet, and plump children were legally condemned to get spare again...

The Italian cooks were, for a season, fashionable in France; but they had a passion for poetry as well as for pies, and were given to let their sauces burn while they recited wh...

But Carême was capricious. It was not that he was unfaithful, but he was _volage_; and he passed from kitchen to kitchen, as the bee wings from flower to flower. The Emperor Ale...

It would appear that in Foote’s time Scotland was not famous for a lavish hospitality. The old actor gave some glorious dinners to the first people in the city, and his prelimin...

We have heard of an American who tried to tame an oyster. The Romans were more successful with their sea-eels, which would come when called, and feed from the hands of men, who...

The lamb and the kid have smoked upon divine altars and humble tables. The Greeks were especially fond of both, and the Romans were like them in this respect; but the Egyptians...

Pheasants’ brains were among the ingredients of the dish that Vitellius invented, and which he designated by the name of “Shield of Minerva.” They were greedily eaten by many ot...

The cabbage has had a singular destiny,--in one country an object of worship; in another, of contempt. The Egyptians made of it a god; and it was the first dish they touched at...

But this must have been in very late times, previous to which frugality, modesty, and indifferent pay were ever the Tribune’s share of the national virtues and their consequence...

When Murat wished to instigate the Italians to labour, he cut down their olive-trees. The Jews were forbidden to destroy fruit-trees, even in an enemy’s country; and it used to...

But many a hasty assertion has been simply the effect of an antagonism between imperfect chymification and the oppressed intellect. Mind and matter have much influence on each o...

The “_Voyage_” of Fénelon was probably founded on a fragment of Teleclides, who has narrated, in rattling Greek metres, how the citizens of the world lived and banqueted in the...

When Diodorus Siculus wrote an account of the aboriginal inhabitants of Britain, some fifty years before the Christian era, he described the island as being thickly inhabited, r...

Of the table traits of this century, the best examples are to be found in Pepys and Evelyn. In the Diary of the former, may be seen what a jolly tavern life could be led by a gr...

Some of the women were not only coarse in speech, but furies in act, and often sharpers to boot. Thus, when “Jemmy Lumley,” in 1761, had a party of ladies at his house, with who...

Early ages, and the oldest poets, confessed, that wine was the gift of the gods to men. The latter would appear to have abused the gift, if we may believe Philonides the physici...

_Good_ living, as it was erroneously called, was certainly, at one time, an universal observance in Germany, when the sole wish of man was, that he might have short sermons and...

One of the most ingenious--perhaps we should say, one of the most scientific--tricks that we have heard of, in connexion with wine-doctoring, proves that the modern chymical bre...

“We talked of flowers that night,” continued Knudtzen, “as though they were the foremost as well as the fairest things in all the world. But we were sciolists in the science, an...

Among the legends of the Rhine connected with my present subject of wine, there is one which is worth mentioning. The great Karloman, who loved good liquor, bequeathed to the br...

These tombs are full of instruction to those who can read them. They show us that the chief butler and cook--the “keeper of the drinks,” and the Prince (_sar_) of his cooks--wer...

And thus says Alban Butler of him:--“He never would admit of the least thing to give a savour to the herbs or meal-gruel on which he supported himself. If anything was brought h...

Who would expect to hear good of a Borgia?--St. Francis Borgia was virtuous enough to save his family name from entire infamy. Of no other man or woman of his house could it be...

The people are brought up on a food likely to encourage such pugnacious propensities. Mr. Perkyns, speaking of the slaughtering of oxen for the kitchen, says:--“Almost before th...

It was not every one that deemed himself entitled, that could find access to the table of Cæsar Augustus. He was extremely nice with regard to his associates, but he was not so...

If Gratian, who was the first Roman emperor who refused the pontifical robe, had lived but as became the master of an imperial household, his sacrifice would have had more merit...

But Louis XIV. was so well-used to this, and much more ceremony than I have space to detail, that it interfered in nowise with the comfortable indulgence of his appetite. He was...

Jermann describes the imperial kitchen at St. Petersburg as good, delicate, and “meagre,”--the latter being a consequence of the continual eating that is going on, and the neces...

Henry III. was the first of our kings whose reign exceeded half-a-century in duration. He was a moderate man, loved plain fare, and cared more for masses than merriment. He was...

When he was lying hid in Spring Coppice, the goodwife Yates brought to his most sacred majesty “a mess of milk, some butter, and eggs,”--better fare than the parched peas which...

We are told by old Pierre de Chastel, Bishop of Macon, that the ordinary etiquette of service was rigorously maintained every day, during eleven days, as if the king had been li...

But the Australians do not always exhibit this extreme nicety. If they cannot, or once could not, eat biscuits, they have no such delicate scruples about eating babies, even whe...

Moore loved to dine with the great; but there have been many authors who could not appreciate the supposed advantages of such distinction. Lainez was one of these, and there wer...

Such was the table and daily life of an author who began to despair of his country! In 1732, however, the dean was again full of hope,--we see it in the condition of his wine ma...

It may be said that civilization never afforded such examples of deformed appetites as some of those which we find in the records of the olden time. But this is not the case. Th...

Celebrated as the “petits soupers” of the French were during the last century, they were equalled in brilliancy, and perhaps surpassed in popularity, by those given in Paris by...

An American writer on dietetics is half afraid that people will smile if he, in connexion with the subject, introduces dainty children; and yet, as he justly remarks, “there is...