ed him on until I accomplished him in giving
the last polish, and can now proudly say he is a true artist in the
profession."

On entering a diligence once at Lyons, I found two persons in it, of
very decent aspect; the one a middle aged man, the other a youth of
about eighteen or nineteen; the former soon found an opportunity of
informing me that he was a Parisian, but lest that should not adequately
impress me with a sufficiently high idea of his importance, he added
that he was _chef de cuisine_ to the Duke of ----, and that Monsieur,
pointing to the youth opposite, was an _aspirant_, who had been placed
under his auspices. The young man bowed assent, and appeared most
sensibly to feel the vast magnitude of the honours to which he was
aspiring; but the whole was announced with such an air of solemnity and
consequence, that a minister of state with his secretary would never
have attempted to assume. An Englishman under the same circumstances
would have merely said, "I am head cook to the Duke of ---- and that
young man is my 'prentice." However, my travelling companions were
overpoweringly civil, and I of course was deeply awed by finding myself
in company with such elevated personages, of which they no doubt were
sensible, and where we stopped for dinner they gave us the benefit of
their professional talent, by entering the kitchen, giving the inmates
to understand who they were, and the advantage of advice gratis, as to
the arrangement of such dishes for which they were still in time to
superintend; and when we sat down at the table d'hote, the _chef de
cuisine_ did not fail to inform me that he had done as much as laid in
his power to ensure our having a good dinner, as my being a foreigner he
was particularly anxious that France should sustain her high reputation
for the culinary art in my estimation; but regretted that in the first
place he arrived too late to effect much good, and indeed, had he come
before it would have been but of little avail; for the provincials were
such complete barbarians, that it was difficult for an enlightened
person to commune with them: that absolutely he and they appeared to be
quite of another species.

It is a happy circumstance for the French, that their pride does not
consist in a desire to get out of their station, but an extreme anxiety
to exaggerate the importance of the station in which they are placed; a
cook, for example, has the most exalted idea of the art of cookery, a