our. In the time of Louis XIV. the cooks had attained to such a
degree of perfection in their art, that they could convert the form and
flesh of the trout, pike, or carp, into the very shape and flavour of
the most delicious game.

The French long enjoyed a European reputation for their skill
and refinement in the preparing of food. In place of plain
joints, French cookery delights in the marvels of what are
called made dishes, ragouts, stews, and fricassees, in which no
trace of the original materials of which they are compounded is
to be found.

217. FROM GAUL WE CROSS TO BRITAIN, where it has been asserted, by, at
least, one authority, that the ancient inhabitants ate no fish. However
this may be, we know that the British shores, particularly those of the
North Sea, have always been well supplied with the best kinds of fish,
which we may reasonably infer was not unknown to the inhabitants, or
likely to be lost upon them for the lack of knowledge as to how they
tasted. By the time of Edward II., fish had, in England, become a
dainty, especially the sturgeon, which was permitted to appear on no
table but that of the king. In the fourteenth century, a decree of King
John informs us that the people ate both seals and porpoises; whilst in
the days of the Troubadours, whales were fished for and caught in the
Mediterranean Sea, for the purpose of being used as human food.

Whatever checks the ancient British may have had upon their
piscatory appetites, there are happily none of any great
consequence upon the modern, who delight in wholesome food of
every kind. Their taste is, perhaps, too much inclined to that
which is accounted solid and substantial; but they really eat
more moderately, even of animal food, than either the French or
the Germans. Roast beef, or other viands cooked in the plainest
manner, are, with them, a sufficient luxury; yet they delight in
living _well_, whilst it is easy to prove how largely their
affections are developed by even the prospect of a substantial
cheer. In proof of this we will just observe, that if a great
dinner is to be celebrated, it is not uncommon for the appointed
stewards and committee to meet and have a preliminary dinner
among themselves, in order to arrange the great one, and after
that, to have another dinner to discharge the bill which the
great one cost. This enjoyable disposition we ta