conciliate the Puritanical portion of his subjects, whose religious notions were supposed (I know not how justly) to have a tendency to self-denial and the mortification of the flesh. Certain it is, that the Calvinists and Roundheads were greater favourites at Billingsgate than the high-church party; from which we may conclude that they consumed more fish. A fact corroborated by the contemporary testimony of Samuel Butler, who says that, when the great struggle commenced, 'Each fisherwoman locked her fish up, And trudged abroad to cry, No Bishop!' "I will only remark, in furtherance of my own views, that the king's beef-eaters, and the gormandising Cavaliers of that period, could never stand in fair fight against the austere and fasting Cromwellians. "It is a vulgar error of your countrymen to connect valour with roast beef, or courage with plum-pudding. There exists no such association; and I wonder this national mistake has not been duly noticed by Jeremy Bentham in his 'Book of Fallacies.' As soon might it be presumed that the pot-bellied Falstaff, faring on venison and sack, could overcome in prowess Owen Glendower, who, I suppose, fed on leeks; or that the lean and emaciated Cassius was not a better soldier than a well-known sleek and greasy rogue who fled from the battle of Philippi, and, as he himself unblushingly tells the world, left his buckler behind him: 'Relicta non bene parmulá.' "I cannot contain my bile when I witness the mode in which the lower orders in your country abuse the French, for whom they have found nothing in their Anglo-Saxon vocabulary so expressive of contempt as the term 'frogeater.' A Frenchman is not supposed to be of the same flesh and blood as themselves; but, like the water-snake described in the Georgics 'Piscibus atram, Improbus ingluviem ranisque loquacibus implet.' Hence it is carefully instilled into the infant mind (when the young idea is taught how to shoot), that you won the victories of Poitiers and Agincourt mainly by the superiority of your diet. In hewing down the ranks of the foeman, much of the English army's success is of course attributed to the dexterous management of their cross-bills, but considerably more to their bill of fare. If I could reason with such simpletons, I would refer them to the records of the commissariat department of that day, and open to their vulgar gaze the folio vii. of Rymer's Federa, where, in the twelfth year of Edward III., A.D. 1338, at page 1021, they would find, that previous to the victory of Cressy there were shipped at Portsmouth, for the use of these gallant troops, fifty tons of Yarmouth herrings. Such were the supplies (rather unusual now in the contracts at Somerset House) which enabled Edward and his valiant son to drive the hosts of France before them, and roll on the tide of war till the towers of Paris yielded to the mighty torrent. After a hasty repast on such simple diet, might the Black Prince appropriately address his girded knights in Shakespearian phrase, Thus far into the bowels of the land Have we marched on without impediment.' "The enemy sorely grudged them their supplies. For it appears by the chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrellet, the continuator of Froissart, that in 1429, while the English were besieging Orleans, the Duke of Bedford sent from his head-quarters, Paris, on the Ash Wednesday of that year, five hundred carts laden with herrings, for the use of the camp during Lent, when a party of French noblemen, viz. Xaintraille, Lahire, De la Tour de Chavigny, and the Chevalier de Lafayette (ancestor of the revolutionary veteran), made a desperate effort to intercept the convoy. But the English detachment, under whose safeguard was this precious deposit, fought pro aris et focis in its defence, and the assailants were routed with the loss of six score knights and much plebeian slaughter. Read Rapin's account of the affray, which was thence called 'la journée des harengs.' "What schoolboy is ignorant of the fact, that at the eve of the battle of Hastings, which gave to your Norman ancestors the conquest of the island, the conduct of the AngloBritons was strongly contrasted with that of the invaders from France; for while in Harold's camp the besotted natives spent the night in revelling and gluttony, the Norman chivalry gave their time to fasting and devotion.-(Goldsmith, A.D. 1066.) "It has not escaped the penetrating mind of the sagacious Buffon, in his views of man and man's propensities (which, after all, are the proper study of mankind), that a predilection for light food and spare diet has always been the characteristic of the Celtic and Eastern races; while the Teutonic, the Sclavonian, and Tartar branches of the human family betray an aboriginal craving for heavy meat, and are gross feeders. In many countries of Europe there has been a slight amalgamation of blood, and the international pedigree in parts of the Continent has become perplexed and doubtful: but the most obtuse observer can see that the phlegmatic habits of the Prussians and Dutch argue a different genealogical origin from that which produced the lively disposition of the tribes of southern Europe. The best specimens extant of the genuine Celt are the Greeks, the Arabians, and the Irish, all of whom are temperate in their food. Among European denominations, in proportion as the Celtic infusion predominates, so in a corresponding ratio is the national character for abstemiousness. Nor would I thus dwell on an otherwise uninteresting speculation, were I not about to draw a corollary, and shew how these secret influences became apparent at what is called the great epoch of the Reformation. The latent tendency to escape from fasting observances became then revealed, and what had lain dormant for ages was at once developed. The Tartar and Sclavonic breed of men flung off the yoke of Rome; while the Celtic races remained faithful to the successor of the 'Fisherman,' and kept Lent. "The Hollanders, the Swedes, the Saxons, the Prussians, and in Germany those circles in which the Gothic blood ran heaviest and most stagnant, hailed Luther as a deliverer from salt fish. The fatted calf was killed, bumpers of ale went round, and Popery went to the dogs. Half Europe followed the impetus given to free opinions, and the congenial impulse of the gastric juice; joining in reform, not because they loved Rome less, but because they loved substantial fare more. Meantime neighbours differed. The Dutch, dull and opaque as their own Zuidersee, growled defiance at the Vatican when their food was to be controlled; the Belgians, being a shade nearer to the Celtic family, submitted to the fast. While Hamburg clung to its beef, and Westphalia preserved her hams, Munich and Bavaria adhered to the Pope and to sour-crout with desperate fidelity. As to the Cossacks, and all that set of northern marauders, they never kept Lent at any time; and it would be arrant folly to expect that the horsemen of the river Don, and the Esquimaux of the polar latitudes, would think of restricting their ravenous propensities in a Christian fashion; the very system of cookery adopted by these terrible hordes would, I fear, have given Dr. Kitchiner a fit of cholera. The apparatus is graphically described by Samuel Butler: I will indulge you with part of the quotation: "For like their countrymen the Huns, All day on horses' backs they straddle, A strange process, no doubt: but not without some sort of precedent in classic records; for the Latin poet introduces young Iulus at a picnic, in the Æneid, exclaiming— 'Heus! etiam mensas consumimus.' "In England, as the inhabitants are of a mixed descent, and as there has ever been a disrelish for any alteration in the habits and fireside traditions of the country, the fish-days were remembered long after every Popish observance had become obsolete; and it was not until 1668 that butchers' meat finally established its ascendency in Lent, at the arrival of the Dutchman. We have seen the exertions of the Tudor dynasty under Elizabeth, and of the house of Stuart under James I. and Charles I., to keep up these fasts, which had flourished in the days of the Plantagenets, which the Heptarchy had revered, which Alfred and Canute had scrupulously observed, and which had come down positively recommended by the Venerable Bede. William III. gave a death-blow to Lent. Until then it had lingered among the threadbare curates of the country, extrema per Hudibras, Canto ii. L 275. illos excedens terris vestigia fecit, having been long before exiled from the gastronomic hall of both Universities. But its extinction was complete. Its ghost might still remain, flitting through the land, without corporeal or ostensible form; and it vanished totally with the fated star of the Pretender. It was William who conferred the honour of knighthood on the loin of beef; and such was the progress of disaffection under Queen Anne, that the folks, to manifest their disregard for the Pope, agreed that a certain extremity of the goose should be denominated his nose! "The indomitable spirit of the Celtic Irish preserved Lent in this country unimpaired; an event of such importance to England, that I shall dwell on it by and by more fully. The Spaniards and Portuguese, although Gothic and Saracen blood has commingled in the pure current of their Phoenician pedigree, clung to Lent with characteristic tenacity. The Gallic race, even in the days of Cæsar, were remarkably temperate, and are so to the present day. The French very justly abhor the gross, carcase-eating propensities of John Bull. But as to the keeping of Lent, in an ecclesiastical point of view, I cannot take on myself to vouch, since the ruffianly revolution, for their orthodoxy in that or any other religious matters. They are sadly deficient therein, though still delicate and refined in their cookery, like one of their own artistes, whose epitaph is in Père la Chaise 'Ci gît qui dès l'âge le plus tendre "It was not so of old, when the pious monarchs of France dined publicly in Passion week on fasting fare, in order to recommend by their example the use of fish-when the heir-apparent to the crown delighted to be called a dolphin -and when one of your own kings, being on a visit to France, got so fond of their lamprey patties, that he died of indigestion on his return. 66 Antiquity has left us no document to prove that the early Spartans kept certain days of abstinence; but their black broth. of which the ingredients have puzzled the |