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touched) do duty at several dinners in succession. Words are not strong enough to condemn the practice—for such réchauffés destroy the original flavour and quality of the dish, however excellent, and, what is worse, they destroy a guest's confidence in the good faith of his host. No man likes to be asked to dine off the remains of yesterday’s banquet, and he probably feels, if he does not express, the same indignation as Mr Osborne after a dinner at his married daughter’s house. ‘“So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs Maria, hey?” said the old gentleman, rattling up the carriage-windows; “so she invites her father and sister to a second day’s dinner (if those sides, or ongtrys, as she calls them, weren’t served yesterday, I'm d——d), and to meet City folks and littery men!”

Caréme was bribed by the offer of £1000 a-year to become chef to George IV, and for a few months he officiated at Carlton House; but the fogs of England affected his spirits, and he felt that his merits were not appreciated at their proper value by his master. “Je lui ai composé une langue de veau en surprise. Il I'a mangé, mais il n’a pas su de la comprendre.” So he composed a last sauce—“la dernière pensée de Caréme”—and returned to Paris, where he became cook to Baron Rothschild. There is an eloquent passage (too long to be quoted here) in one of Lady Morgan’s letters describing a dinner cooked by Caréme at the Baron's villa, which gives us a high idea both of the artist’s excellence and of the lady’s taste in such matters.^[1]

A little previously to the time of which we have been speaking—the time, that is, of Caréme and Beauvilliers, when French cookery may be said to have reached its zenith—there appeared the famous ‘Almanach des Gourmands,’ which is as well known, by name at all events, as the ‘Almanach de Gotha’; yet it may be questioned if one reader out of twenty knows anything of the book beyond its name, and still less knows anything of its author, the famous gastronomist, Grimod de la Regniére. As a matter of fact, however, there is little in his life that is either interesting or edifying. He was rich, eccentric, and a great epicure, and his dinners and his knowledge of cookery were equally famous. The first part of his celebrated ‘Almanach,’ which has been ever since a household word among bon vivants, was written in 1803, and from the day of its first appearance the book has been widely popular, not so much for its practical hints on the science of the table, or from the menus of famous dinners or the recipes for soups and entrées, which form a large portion of the eight volumes, as from the charming language in which the merest platitudes and commonplaces are set out, so as to interest and amuse the reader almost in spite of himself. As such, the book has had its admirers among men of every type of character—from the late Duke of York, who considered that, next to the Bible, it was the best book in the world, down to Macaulay, who, reading, as he did, everything, from Photius to the last twopenny ballad, was a diligent student of the ‘Almanach,’ and used to tease his nephew, Sir George Trevelyan, then a Harrow boy, with long quotations from its pages.