subject;
perchance he had looked into Kitchener's Preface. He lets us know that
he had made collections of the same kind at an earlier period of his
career, but had destroyed them, partly owing to his arduous duties
at the Reform Club, and partly to the depressing influence of the
nineteenth edition of somebody else's cookery book--probably, by
the way, Ude's. The present work occupied some ten months, and was
prepared amid the most stupendous interruptions from fair visitors to
the Club (15,000), dinners for the members and their friends (25,000),
dinner parties of importance (38), and the meals for the staff (60).
He gives a total of 70,000 dishes; but it is not entirely clear
whether these refer to the 38 dinner parties of importance, or to
the 25,000 of inferior note, or to both. The feeling of dismay at the
nineteenth edition of somebody must have been sincere, for he winds
up his preface with an adjuration to his readers (whom, in the
"Directions for Carving," he does not style Gentle, or Learned, or
Worshipful, but HONOURABLE) not to place his labours on the same shelf
with "Paradise Lost."

Soyer had also perhaps certain misgivings touching too close an
approximation to other _chefs_ besides Milton and Shakespeare, for he
refers to the "profound ideas" of Locke, to which he was introduced,
to his vast discomfort, "in a most superb library in the midst of a
splendid baronial hall." But the library of the Reform Club probably
contained all this heterogeneous learning. Does the "Gastronomic
Regenerator," out of respect to the fastidious sentiments of its
author, occupy a separate apartment in that institution with a
separate curator?

It seems only the other day to me, that Soyer took Gore Lodge, and
seemed in a fair way to make his removal from the Reform Club a
prosperous venture. But he lost his wife, and was unfortunate in other
ways, and the end was very sad indeed. "Soyez tranquille," was the
epitaph proposed at the time by some unsentimental wagforpoor Madame
Soyer; it soon served for them both.

But nearly concurrent with Soyer's book appeared one of humble
pretensions, yet remarkable for its lucidity and precision, Eliza
Acton's "Modern Cookery in all its Branches reduced to an easy
practice," 16mo, 1845. I have heard this little volume highly
commended by competent judges as exactly what it professes to be; and
the quantities in the receipts are particularly reliable.

The first essay to bring into