*

THE GOOSE OF STRASBURG.

115

ning, but gloried in it. It was only necessary for him to endow the eel with the same noble endurance that has been attributed to the goose. "To obtain these livers (the foies gras of Strasbourg) of the size required, it is necessary," says a writer in the Almanach, "to sacrifice the person of the animal. Crammed with food, deprived of drink, and fixed near a great fire, before which it is nailed by its feet upon a plank, this goose passes, it must be owned, an uncomfortable life. The torment would indeed be altogether intolerable if the idea of the lot which awaits him did not serve as a consolation. But this perspective makes him endure his sufferings with courage; and when he reflects that his liver, bigger than himself, larded with truffles, and clothed in a scientific paté, will, through the instrumentality of M. Corcellet, diffuse all over Europe the glory of his name, he resigns himself to his destiny, and suffers not a tear to flow."

Should it, notwithstanding, be thought that the conduct of M. Ude or M. Corcellet, as regards eels or geese, is indefensible, we may still say of them as Berchoux says of Nero,

"Je sais qu'il fut cruel, assassin, suborneur,

Mais de son estomac je distingue son cœur."

M. Ude has committed a few errors in judgment, however, which we defy his greatest admirers (and we

* One of the most important services rendered by Mr. Bentham and his disciples to the world is a formal refutation of the common fallacy as to eels. "No eel is used to be skinned successively by several persons; but one and the same person is used successively to skin several eels." So says the sage in the last of his works, the pamphlet entitled Boa Constrictor, which he wrote to strangle Lord Brougham.

profess ourselves to be of the number) to palliate. He has recommended purée aux truffes, the inherent impropriety of which has been already demonstrated; and he has intrusted the task of translating (perhaps of editing) his book to some person or persons equally ignorant of the French language and of the culinary art. The following instances are extracted from his Vocabulary of terms:

"Entremets-is the second course which comes between the roast meat and the dessert.

"Sautez-is to mix or unite all the parts of a ragout by shaking it about.

66

Piqué―is to lard with a needle game, fowls, and all sorts of meat.

66

Farce. This word is used in speaking of chopped meat, fish, or herbs, with which poultry and other things are stuffed before they are cooked."

This word, M. Ude may depend upon it, will be applied to something else, if he suffers such glaring ignorance to remain much longer a blot upon his book. Neither do we at all like the mode of translating the names and dishes, which are really untranslateable; as Boudin à la Bourgeoise, Pudding, Citizen's Wife's way; Matelotte à la Marinière, Sea- Wife's Matelot; à la Maître d' Hôtel, with Steward's Sauce, &c. In the Index also we found " Soup, au Lait d'Amant (the Lover's Soup)." Being somewhat puzzled to know what this could be, we turned to the recipe, (p. 65,) which is headed "Potage au Lait d'Almond (the Lover's Soup)."

Whether it stood

Amant or Almond seems to have been a matter of

indifference to the translator; but he was resolved at all events that the soup should be dedicated to love.*

*Since this article was written, we have been informed that a Generai History of Cookery, in ten portly volumes, 8vo., has just appeared at Leipsig; but we regret that we have not as yet been able to procure a copy.

July, 1835.

THE HONEY-BEE.

How the little busy bee improves each shining hour— makes hay when the sun shines-makes honey, that is, when flowers blow, is not only a matter for the poet and the moralist, and the lover of nature, but has become an important subject of rural, and cottage, and even political economy itself. If West Indian crops fail, or Brazilian slave-drivers turn sulky, we are convinced that the poor at least may profit as much from their beehives as ever they will from the extracted juices of parsnips or beet-root. And in this manufacture they will at least begin the world on a fair footing. No monopoly of capitalists can drive them from a market so open as this. Their winged stock have free pasturage-commonage without stint-be the proprietor who he may, wherever the freckled cowslip springs and the wild thyme blows. Feudal manors and parked royalties, high deer-fences and forbidding boundary belts, have no exclusiveness for them; no action of trespass can lie against them, nor are they ever called upon for their certificates. But if exchange be no robbery, they are no thieves: they only take that which would be useless to all else besides, and even their

hard-earned store is but a short-lived possession. The plagiarist Man revenges himself on them for the white lilies they have dusted and disturbed, and makes all their choicely-culled sweets his own. But though he never tasted a drop of their honey, the bees would still accomplish the work that Providence has allotted them in fructifying our flowers and fruit-blossoms, which man can at the best but clumsily imitate, and in originating new varieties which probably far surpass in number and beauty all that has been done by the gardening experimentalist. Florists are apt to complain of the mischief the bee does in disturbing their experiments and crossing species which they wish to keep separate; but they forget how many of their choicest kinds, which are commonly spoken of as the work of chance, have in reality been bee-made, and that, where man fructifies one blossom, the bee has worked upon ten thousand.

It is certain, however, that the great interest taken in bees from the earliest times, and which, judging from the number of books lately published, is reviving among us with no common force, has arisen chiefly from the marked resemblance which their modes of life seem to bear to those of man. Remove every fanciful theory and enthusiastic reverie, and there still remains an analogy far too curious to be satisfied with a passing glance. On the principle of "nihil humani à me alienum,” this approximation to human nature has ever made them favourites with their masters. And theirs is no hideous mimicry of man's follies and weaknesses, such as we see in the monkey tribe, which to us has always appeared too much of a satire to afford unalloyed