hance,'
it is said by an ingenious historian, who, having been long a secretary
in the East India House, must certainly have had access to the best
information upon Eastern matters--'Chance,' it is said by Mr.
Charles Lamb, 'which burnt down a Chinaman's house, with a litter of
sucking-pigs that were unable to escape from the interior, discovered to
the world the excellence of roast-pig.' Gunpowder, we know, was invented
by a similar fortuity." [The reader will observe that my style in the
supposed character of a Gastronomic Agent is purposely pompous and
loud.] "So, 'tis said, was printing,--so glass.--We should have drunk
our wine poisoned with the villanous odor of the borachio, had not
some Eastern merchants, lighting their fires in the Desert, marked the
strange composition which now glitters on our sideboards, and holds the
costly produce of our vines.

"We have spoken of the natural riches of a country. Let the reader think
but for one moment of the gastronomic wealth of our country of England,
and he will be lost in thankful amazement as he watches the astonishing
riches poured out upon us from Nature's bounteous cornucopia! Look at
our fisheries!--the trout and salmon tossing in our brawling streams;
the white and full-breasted turbot struggling in the mariner's net; the
purple lobster lured by hopes of greed into his basket-prison, which
he quits only for the red ordeal of the pot. Look at whitebait, great
heavens!--look at whitebait, and a thousand frisking, glittering,
silvery things besides, which the nymphs of our native streams bear
kindly to the deities of our kitchens--our kitchens such as they are.

"And though it may be said that other countries produce the
freckle-backed salmon and the dark broad-shouldered turbot; though trout
frequent many a stream besides those of England, and lobsters sprawl
on other sands than ours; yet, let it be remembered, that our native
country possesses these altogether, while other lands only know them
separately; that, above all, whitebait is peculiarly our country's--our
city's own! Blessings and eternal praises be on it, and, of course, on
brown bread and butter! And the Briton should further remember, with
honest pride and thankfulness, the situation of his capital, of London:
the lordly turtle floats from the sea into the stream, and from the
stream to the city; the rapid fleets of all the world se donnent
rendezvous in the docks of our silvery Thames; the produce o