and tough, and at nightfall you will long dark and "wicked broth" called Hasenfor an honest slice from a good wheaten pfeffer, into the mysteries of which occult loaf. The sour rye bread, ranging from preparation I never ventured to pry, black to a light brown, is much con- though frequently I saw and heard it pardemned by some as affording little nour- taken of with sounds of succulent apishment; nevertheless one may acquire a proval in the kitchen. Sweetbreads, for taste for it, and many persons declare which your butcher calmly demands ten that they prefer it to the tasteless insip- shillings a pair during the London seaidity of the white roll. In some parts of son, are to be procured for such a price Germany you can get what is called as need not wound the conscience of the "Englisches Brod" baked in small cakes; tenderest Hausfrau; veal kidneys (who it is made of very fine white flour, with a ever knew how delicious a veal kidney mixture of butter and milk and a dash of could be until he partook of Nierensugar in it, that quite destroys any resem- schnitte ?) need not exercise your mind on blance the name might lead you to ex- the score of economy, nor need you even pect. Bakeries are under government hesitate much about "caviare to the gensupervision; not only the weight of the eral," or pâté de foie gras to the particubread, but the quality of the flour is lar. The tables of the world have recogtested; and as neither the day nor the nized the merits of Strasbourg pies, hour of the inspector's coming can be cal-Westphalia hams, Pomeranian gooseculated upon, evasion is almost impossi- breasts, Brunswick sausages, Bavarian ble, and cases of adulteration and light beer, Lübeck marchpane, and Hamboro' weight so exceptional, as not to be worth beef; no contemptible list of exportable quoting. edibles. Of the beef and mutton I can

I shall, perhaps, surprise the preju- not speak in glowing terms. Neverthediced amongst my readers when I say less they are to be had fairly good, and that I found the matériel, as a rule, ex-in the days of the small Residenz towns cellent in Germany. Bread, butter, milk, the reigning duke or prince would genand eggs abundant. The market well erally have his beeves and sheep fatstocked with fruit and vegetables of the tened after approved methods, so that commoner kind (several of the latter un- with a little interest and civility, one known to us might be adopted with ad- could usually so far soften the heart of vantage into our bills of fare). Poultry, the slaughterer (Schlachter) as to have an as a rule, is poor, but cheap. Pigeons to English-looking sirloin and a mature leg be had for a few pence; game, in season, of mutton as often as one wished upon generally plentiful. No one who has ever one's table. In the same way there tasted in a private house a German Reh- would be a poultry-farm or Fasanerie, braten with cream sauce, will dispute its where the doomed birds would be shut in excellence; the claims of roast partridge little pens and "genudelt," à la mode de with Sauerkraut (this latter not the greasy Strasbourg, for the royal or ducal table, mess table-d'hôte dinners may suggest, so that a plump roast capon or pheasant but a delicately tempered digestive) to was quite within the region of recurring recognition have been acknowledged by possible good things. On a changé tout the descendants of Vatel-and Ude, for it cela, however, and doubtless such conis a dish to be found in every well-com- cessions are reckoned amongst the corpiled French menu of the present day. ruptions of the past. Veal is better in What housewife would not gratefully hail Germany than with us; and though at all the fact that she might buy a saddle of times unwholesome and indigestible as hare just as we buy a saddle of mutton, food, forms a pleasing variety in the list which, well larded and baptized with sour of ordinary dishes that appear on the cream, is so mellow and melting a mor- homely board. It is a drawback, to use a sel that you might unhesitatingly set it Hibernicism, that all the roasts (like those solus before a king. The hare is never that did coldly furnish forth the Queen of trussed and sent up to table with its long Denmark's marriage tables) are baked. ears, lean head, and unpleasantly grinning Yet, baked meat, well-basted and not teeth, as with us; if you buy the whole overdone, forms a concentrated kind of animal (and unless you want some small food that use makes almost as palatable and appétissant addition to your dinner as the spitted joint, and seems to be makyou will probably do so), the head will be ing its way to popularity here. Pork is taken off, the legs broken at the joints, not a favourite dish on the tables of the and the interior of the animal will be util- rich; that is, not in its simpler form; in ized for the servants' dinner, forming al its more complex preparation pig is a

popular meat with all classes. Schlacht- and forests of fennel; no piled-up lobwurst, Mettwurst, Blutwurst, Rauchen- sters in gorgeous array, splendid silmon, den, Leberwurst, (this latter being pigs' many-tinted mackerel, delicate whitings livers, prepared like pâté de foie gras, or domestic soles, colossal cod, ministedelicately spiced and truffled) are only rial white bait or silver sprats, will tempt a few of the endless popular varieties at once your eyes and your palate; you of the German sausage. Ham is gener-will probably have to dive into an obscure ally eaten raw, well smoked, and if pre- shop, whence issues anything but invitingsented at tea or supper, a little wooden ly "a most ancient and fish-like smell," platter and a sharp knife will be placed when, in answer to your demands, a doubtbeside you in order that you may cut it ful-looking marine monster will be pulled into small pieces such as are used by out of a mysterious tub at the back of the cooks for larding. Taken in this way as counter, with the remark, Heut' giebt's a relish, the flavour is sweet and appe- nur Schellfisch ("how unpleasantly," as tizing, but the uncooked state of the meat Thackeray's schoolboy says of the monrenders it tough (zähe), and involves more keys, "they always smelt"), or Dorsch, or mastication than is agreeable. Barsch, as the case may be. In the socalled fish-shop there will be all kinds of pickled herrings (these form the foundation of that most popular of German dishes, Häringssalat), bloaters (Bücklinge), small dried sprats (Kieler Sprotten), perhaps even pickled salmon and a pot of caviare may tempt you; for the love of Germans for every kind of salt and dried fish (perhaps in default of fresh) is apparently an appetite that grows by what it feeds upon.

Some years ago a cry went abroad of whole districts suffering from trichina; and in some parts of the country not only was the mortality alarming, but the sufferings of the afflicted so frightful, that government commissions with properly appointed medical officers were told off to inquire into the subject. The result was, that in every town a medical_officer was appointed to certify the wholesome condition of all the pigs slaughtered before the butcher was permitted to offer I remember tasting in Mecklenburg the meat for human food. In this coun- a most dainty dish of dabs, or flatfish, try, where pork and ham are not eaten smoked in nettle-smoke (this gave them raw, such measures are unnecessary. Un-a peculiar delicate flavour) and stewed in pleasant as the idea of such parasites must be, we know that the boiling would destroy their dangerous qualities; but in Germany, where uncooked ham is the rule and not the exception, and where the sausages that are eaten cold are invariably only smoked, the precaution is an emphatically necessary one.

fresh cream; the accompaniment being a delicious kind of black bread, short and rather sweet, liberally bespread with freshly-churned butter. Very excellent, too, are pigeons braised and served with milkrice; the rice being so boiled that each grain is distinct, and surrounded with the rich milk in which it has been cooked, Fish, except in seaport towns (and so that it tastes almost like cream. This these are few and far between in Ger- custom of serving rice, Gries, and differmany), is a scarce and doubtful commod-ent sorts of farinaceous food, cooked ity; the Elbe and Rhine salmon very in- with milk, as we serve vegetables, with ferior in flavour to our own, and always roast meat, is one that we might well imdear. When produced on great occa-itate; we have the beginning of it in our sions, this fish is almost always served bread-sauce with birds, but in Germany cold, encased in a sour jelly if whole, or accompanied by varieties of mayonnaise sauces if only portions of it are presented to the guests. Carp and tench, those muddiest of the fresh-water finny tribe, are spoken of with bated breath, as of delicacies fit for the table of Apicius himself; but they are generally so disguised with vinegar and complicated flavourings, that the mud may be said to yield to treatment. Not only are the salt-water fish very inferior to our own, but of infinitely less variety. No slop ing marble slabs, sluiced with fresh water, adorned with mountains of ice

it is introduced in a variety of forms. Rabbits are rejected by the poorest as vermin, unfit for human food; by which means a cheap and not unwholesome dish, when partaken of occasionally, is lost to the labouring man.

Potatoes in bucketfuls, and prepared in fifty different fashions, form the staple of the food of the lower orders.

Dinner, which in Germany is often a painfully protracted business, lasting on occasions even three or four hours, is, in a general way, partaken of between the hours of twelve and two, according to the occupation of the master and the school

hours of the children of the house. It is ferent from what we are accustomed to scarcely served in a more appetizing consider good, I confess I always hailed manner than the scrambling breakfast. its appearance with satisfaction. Bread, There is a want of cleanliness, of order, butter, cold ham, sausage, tongue, hardof propriety; if I may say so, a want of boiled eggs, sardines, cheese, and cakes, diguity about the table arrangements with perhaps a few additions and alterathat would almost suggest the total ab- tions if friends share the meal, represent sence of any æsthetic feeling in those a German supper, or Abendessen. Borwho sit round the ill-appointed board. deaux, or beer, or the wines of the counThe servants are noisy, the cloth is try, are generally taken by the men in crumpled, the dishes are slammed down preference to tea. Cigars follow; the upon the table, the gravy is tilted over, ladies retire into the withdrawing-room, the glass is miscellaneous, the knives and at ten o'clock every one is in bed. and forks are put in a heap, the plates All the housewives, as autumn wanes, are not changed frequently enough. No lay in a goodly store of vegetables to last crisp water-cress or curly parsley adorns through the winter months, when nothing your cold joint, or sets off the complex- of the kind is to be procured for love or ion of your butter; it is thought no sole- money. Potatoes are banked up in the cism for every one to plunge his knife cellars, cabbages, carrots, turnips, onions, into the salt-cellar, or pick his teeth at are buried in layers of mould, whence table, to stretch across and reach for your cook will extract them, uninjured whatever he wants. Everything seems by damp or frost, for the daily meal. to be done in a hurry, and yet everything Vegetables of the finer sort, such as is served separately, so that there is French beans, peas, &c., are, as they nothing to distract the attention from the come into season, preserved for winter matter in hand. There is a sense at once use in tins, the process observed being of repletion and emptiness in a German a very simple one; the vegetables, with dinner. Your stomach has been filled, a little salt and water, are put into the tins, but not fortified. You have begun with which are then hermetically sealed by a a soup which, mathematically speaking, man who comes to solder them down; may be said to represent length without the tins are placed in another pan with breadth; this has been followed by the boiling water, and if air bubbles rise to bouilli, or soup-meat, out of which all the surface when the water boils, you nourishment has been flayed, accompa- know that there is a flaw somewhere in nied by a sour sauce, of Morscheln (a de- the soldering; your man takes out the based kind of mushroom), boiled in but-offending tin, ascertains where the defect ter and vinegar; you will have abundance is, and repairs it.

of vegetables stewed in fat or butter; These tins of preserved vegetables sausages and lentils; some little dump-may be bought now in nearly every Englings called Klösse, compotes of cranber-lish grocer's shop; but our simpler ries and bilberries, stewed plums or method of preparing their contents has cherries; a piece of roast veal, or a fowl (for roast read baked), with potato-salad. cabbage-salad, or Sauerkraut, and a Mehlspeise, this representing a rather better than average dinner in an ordinary German household.

At four o'clock coffee will be brought in; after which the master of the house will depart for his club, and the mistress will pay visits amongst her friends, until the time comes for the theatre. The family will not reassemble until supper, which will be taken between the hours of seven and nine, depending on the length of the opera or comedy, the days on which the ladies of the house are abonnées, and the various other family engagements and exigencies. This is a pleasant meal, resembling high tea. In many houses tea is served as with us, and though the flavour of it is very dif

not helped them to popularity. In Germany, where the flavour is aided by all sorts of spices, cinnamon, and nutmeg, sugar and butter, their flatness is much disguised, and they prove a welcome substitute for the real thing. Dried apples and pears and plums, which all take the place of vegetables, and enter largely into the ordinary domestic fare, are also bought wholesale for winter storage; and these with peas, beans, lentils, and rice, not to speak of Gries, Grütze, buckwheat, and other farinaceous sorts unknown here, afford a fair scope for variety in the domestic cuisine.

It will be objected that Germany could never have produced such fighting men, such deep-chested, loud-voiced, wellbelted, straight-limbed, clanking, swaggering, awe-inspiring warriors as she has lately shown the world, on a fare of veal,

vinegar, and chickens. Surely, these as they come from parade with a good martial heroes, with the front of demi- basin of beef-bouillon, with a deep gods and the endurance of Titans, show draught of Bavarian beer, with an orgie a valour, a high courage, and a well-fed of oysters. Don't you remember Heine's confidence, whose muscularity speaks "Lieutenants and Fähndrichs, die sind volumes in favour of the flesh-pots of the die klugen Leute," who come and lap up fatherland. "Wine to make glad the the Rhine-wine and the oysters, that were heart of man, and oil to make him a rained down in a beneficial hour on the cheerful countenance," sings the warrior- Berlin Steinpflaster? My most gracious, king, David, who himself belonged to those are the typical men, the coming fighting times and to a fighting race, and men, the useful men. Their great frames was able to appreciate the fact that anand loud voices are the outcome of ill-fed body makes a lily-liver and a healthily active lives. What has your craven heart. We must have the healthy woman-child been doing all this time? body if we are to have the healthy mind; She has been sitting behind the stove we cannot expect doughty deeds without (hintern Ofen), sucking sugar-glums, muscular development. and swallowing sweet hot coffee; nib"Have you," said a learned Theban bling greasy cakes in a stifling stove-exonce to me, "observed (I am speaking as hausted atmosphere. She does not, as a physiologist) how inferior, in our coun- do your English ladies, ride, walk, swim, try, is the woman-animal to the man- take what you call "the constitutional," animal?" When a great physician, garden, boat, haymake, croquet, enjoy all whose name is writ on the scroll of those diversions we read of in your Engtwenty learned societies in your own lish books. The grease that nourishes country, stoops to ask you such a leading her brother disagrees with her; she has question as this, you are bound not to no digestion; her teeth decay; she take exception at the form in which he spoils their enamel with vinegar and lemframes it, and to give him the answer he onade; she pecks at an ounce of exexpects. "Well," he went on to say, hausted soup-meat; she takes here a "the cause and the effect lie very near snick and there a snack; she becomes together. Observe, how do we feed our bleichsüchtig, she is ordered to take the man-child, and how do we feed our air; she totters out on high-heeled shoes woman-child? You will say, pretty much to her coffee Kränzchen; she sits in a alike. They start fair. The peasant summer-house and tortures cotton round mother nourishes both. The active life a hook; she goes to the theatre; she of our women of the lower orders circu- passes from one heated, exhausted atmoslates the blood, helps them to assimilate phere to another gas-and-oil-heated one. the vast quantities of food they take, and How can she be hungry? How can her this, of course, is nutritious. The baby food nourish her? Is it a wonder that cuts its teeth; it is prompted to another she has no chest, no muscles, no race, no form of food, and from this moment the type, no physique?" cried my excited paths of the man-child and the woman- friend. "Would the young man have child are divergent. The boy goes to been any better with such a life? And school, skates, turns (many an English- this is only the beginning of the story; man might be astonished at the feats of between the Alpha of food and the Omega young German athletes in their Turn- of planting new generations in the world hallen), makes walking-tours in his holi- there is a series of disastrous mistakes," days, drills, marches, goes through his said Dr. Zukünftig, presenting me with a spring and autumn manoeuvres, develops pamphlet "On the Comparative Assimilathe muscles of a Hercules and the appe- tive Powers of the Races of Modern Eutite of a Briareus. His active, out-door rope." I leave him in his professional enlife, the oxygen he breathes, the fatigue thusiasm, which led him into an elohe undergoes, the discipline to which he quent and exhaustive verbal treatise on submits, all contribute to develop a the complex causes of physical female strong straight body, to enrich his blood, degeneracy, together with a fine compreand to help him to assimilate his food. hensive scheme for the rehabilitation of The brain is nourished, the muscles are the human race, by the abolition of gasnourished, the organs become strong and light, stove-heat, high heels, coffee, corhealthy. Look at our young officers, and sets, scandal, and chignons, since in this say if their appetites be not heroic. Ob-paper food alone may reasonably engage serve that they eat with large comprehen- our attention.

sive hungriness; they restore themselves Of the drinks of Germany not much

need be said. Rhine-wine and Bavarian Gardening is a science very little underbeer are accepted liquids, and need no stood; the outlay of manure, labour, bush. But whilst upon the subject I time, and so on, which is necessary to may mention an institution, well worthy produce anything like perfection in trees, of emulation, in the little drinking-booths plants, or vegetables, would be looked which, planted at regular intervals along upon as thriftless waste. The pears, the hot and dusty thoroughfares, offer apples, plums, and cherries grow almost you such welcome refreshment in the wild. To dig about them and rake them, shape of sparkling waters, effervescing to produce varieties, and to improve by lemonade, and soda and seltzer-water, for selection of earths and manures the a penny the glass, with any kind of fruit- standard stocks, seems an almost unnecsyrup you choose added to the reviving essary trouble, since you can pull up the and sparkling draught. It may be ob- old tree when it is exhausted, and plant jected that in London such obstructive another in a different spot. Quantity, edifices would seriously impede the traffic not quality, is what you want; and cerand cause a block upon the pavement, tainly if quality were presented to you at and that shop-rent is too dear to admit of the fraction of a farthing more than its mineral water, ginger-beer, lemonade, rival quantity, you would, on merely conand raspberry vinegar being sold at a scientious grounds alone, reject the penny a glass. That may be so; but the former for the latter. boon of these little temples of refresh- If ever the happy time should come ment, where the weary wayfarer deposits (and I doubt it, short of the millennium) his modest coin and receives a long cool when our cooks will permit the young draught in return that sends him on his ladies of the household to learn how to way rejoicing, is not to be overlooked or prepare the food that they seem paid to denied. Very excellent and quite worthy spoil, I hope a Median and a Persian its poetic name, is the fragrant Maitrank law may be passed at the same time to that one gets in the "merry mouth; prevent these fair creatures from carryand not to be forgotten in the enumera-ing the history of their culinary prowess tion of dainty drinks is the imposing and exploits beyond the dinner-table. Bowle, for which nectar a vessel has Let a stand be made against the persistbeen specially created and consecrated, ent talk of food that poisons any attempt and without which no convivial meeting at conversation where two or three Geror dancing-party would be held com- man housewives are gathered together. plete. The unction with which greasy details In many parts of Germany tea is looked are discussed; the comparisons (specially upon as medicine. "Is, then, the gra- odious, it seems to me, in post-prandial cious lady ill?" is no uncommon ques- hours of repletion) of goose-grease dription, if by chance an irresistible longing ping with bacon fat; the wearisome enushould overtake you for the "cheer- meration of mysteries connected with this ing cup." It is only to be had good in dumpling, that sauce, or the other pickle, Russian houses; but even here not al-are a burthen to the flesh and a weariness ways quite according to English taste. Some take lemon instead of milk with it; others substitute red wine; the tea is often scented; and I remember once having a pound of tea sent me which I was told cost three pounds sterling, having come overland, and been bought by the kind donor at the fair of Nishni-Novgorod, of which I will only say, that a little Vanilla boiled in hay would have pleased me quite as well.

to the spirit of any mere outsider grievous to be borne. Some of my best German friends were angry with me because I did not want to eat my cake and have it too. "We are not ruminating animals," I said, trying to make my feeble stand against this eternal talk of food; "and I don't care to chew the cud of culinary memories." But such an intellectual protest went down before the serried ranks of my opponents. Like the Civis Romanus sum of the old Romans, "I am

Fruit, as we see it in Covent Garden, or in the shop-windows of Paris, is un-a German Hausfrau" is the last pean of known in Germany. Perhaps the nearest pride which these patient spouses know; approach to the superexcellence of which and what wonder if they resent your unI speak may be found in the Hamburg market, but then the fruit is imported. Oranges, in the interior, cost twopence and threepence each, and even then are small, and of a very inferior quality.

willing homage, and think scorn of a temper that is contented to leave the discussion of dinner to the table or the kitchen?

"Sir," said old Samuel Johnson, "give