stomach, at page 190. "Butter," he says, expressly," in every state and shape, is a most active promoter of nausea, heartburn, and indigestion." But it is with this as with a thousand other things, that we cannot judge of their ill effects, in our own experience, till we have been for a considerable time emancipated from our slavery to them.

Though man is required, as I think, to use some oil, yet I must think olive oil, - the sweet oil, as it is usually called, oil contained in milk, or even the cream separated from the milk, far preferable to butter, especially salted butter. And as for rancid butter, that is worst of all.

The French are said to have six hundred and eighty-five mixed dishes into which eggs enter as a component part, or a condiment. And the English, and their descendants, the Americans, are not very far behind the French in this career of egg eating. They have been, ever since the days of Lafayette, fast coming up with them.

I am not disposed to ridicule the use of the egg, eaten as an egg, boiled, stewed, or even raw. It is this foolery of commingling it with almost every known substance, if not in the heaven above, at least in the earth beneath, at which I laugh. It is this making every thing, or almost every thing, smack of egg. But then, if eaten even by itself, it should be cooked properly, which is seldom done. There is but one method, by the way, of cooking an egg. If you choose to eat it raw, do so; but if you cook it at all, place it, without breaking the shell, in water, at one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty degrees, never beyond one hundred and sixty-five, and let it remain from twenty to thirty minutes.

If you wish to know the reasons why, ask chemistry. She will tell you that the white of an egg is albumen; that it co

agulates at one hundred and sixty-five degrees, and that when coagulated it is utterly insoluble in any common menstruum, and, of course, is insoluble in the stomach. By the time you have heard her answer thus far, you will guess the rest.

Lard I must say a word about, having recently visited Cincinnati, the land of hog killing and lard oil making. Now, if nothing else were done with this strong, foul stuff but make it into candles, thus killing the swine and saving the whales alive, I would not say so much against it. But when it comes into our families, and alternates, for variety's sake, with butter, and when it comes to this, that one can hardly get a mouthful of food, even at the kind hands of vegetarians themselves, but what smells or even tastes of lard, I cannot refrain from entering my protest. Let others swallow hog's grease who will, but, in mercy's name, spare me.

We are come now to animal food proper; I mean flesh, fish, and fowl. Of these there is a great variety, though, after all, it is a few only that may properly be regarded as the staples. The rest are introduced as occasional friends only.

These, in some shape or other, occupy the centre of all our tables, at least in Britain and America, where they can be obtained. In most countries, I know, they cannot be had, except as an occasional treat on Sundays or at Christmas. And if we speak numerically, I suppose that to a majority of the world they are wholly inaccessible.

To us, in a country which uses more animal food than almost any other, it would seem very strange not to find the flesh platter, at least once or twice a day, occupying a conspicuous place. Every one knows that this and the medicine chest, of which I have before spoken, occupy the centre of the table. And yet, how happens this? Bread, time im

memorial, has been called the staff of life; why, then, is it not treated as such? Why should it not stand, instead of the flesh meats, centrally?

Corn, wine, and oil are the Old Testament order. Not oil, corn, and wine, nor oil, wine, and corn, nor yet wine, oil, and corn; but corn stands first. Corn is the representative of the farinacea, wine of the fruits, or rather of the fruit juices, and oil of the substances into which it enters as a component part.

But whether you regard this arrangement as authoritative, or a mere play of the fancy, — I mean so far as the present argument is concerned, one thing is certain-that bread, in some of its various, but legitimate shapes, is entitled to stand in the middle of the table, the place now assigned by universal consent to the flesh platter. I will say even more than this. The man who shall go through the world, -or even through our own little United States, and persuade mankind to set their bread on the centre of the table will perform a greater work of benevolence than was ever done before by mere man Howard himself not excepted.

This is the order more fully: Bread, in some shape, in the centre; fruits next; and the oily substances a little milk, a little olive oil, or a few nuts, or a little flesh and fish next; unless, indeed, you should take it into your head to rebel against a custom of four thousand years standing, and crowd the latter dishes off the table.

But we must be patient and " bide our time." Christianity will not linger always. The diet assigned by high Heaven six thousand years ago, and which still stands as a broad bill of fare on Heaven's own first immortal page, places bread not only first, in order, at the table, but gives it the predominance every where. I do not mean to intimate that Chris

tianity, or even Judaism, furnishes us, in as many words, with a system of diet and regimen. But it does give us a benevolent system. It gives us humanity. It does not compel us to be accessary to that which directly or indirectly "makes countless thousands mourn.' It does not teach us any principles which should lead us to fill our domestic retirements

those dear resorts of peace, harmony, and love — with relics of the slain. It does not aim to convert our kitchens into slaughter houses, nor our tables into vast repositories of mangled bodies.

But if, as the monarchs of the world, we must do all we can to eat up the world, lest the world should eat us up, - for Darwin says that "Eat or be eaten is the great law of nature," - if we must continue to bespread our table in such a way that it resembles more the dungeon of Bunyan's Doubting Castle than the table of a Christian, then let us make ourselves as acceptable monarchs and tyrants as we can.

Animal food, as we have seen, should be healthy. But this is not enough. The healthier the animal the better. The flesh of full-grown animals is better, all things considered, than that of animals immature or old. Ripe animals, so to say,- as well as ripe fruits, are to be preferred. On this point I have at least one authority, Dr. Whitlaw; I believe, also, half a dozen others.

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Then they are not to be fattened by any forcing process. They should be taken from the open, healthy field, or from the woods, sky, or sea; never from the crowded pen, or cage, or coop, or even from the well or artificial pond. They are to live free and die free, in order to be worth eating.

Again: animal food is not to be corned, salted, spiced, or poisoned. As long as we can keep it without casks, saltpetre, pyroligneous acid, smoke, suet skins, or the skins of other

animal's intestines, why, very well; but when we can no longer keep it in an eatable state without these and kindred abominations, let it go.

Then, in cookery, do not, in the first place, over cook it. Do not cook it in any other substance, nor add to it any other substance after it is cooked, unless it is a little salt. Do not besmear it with gravies, or sprinkle it with pepper, garden herbs, or snuff; or scent it with musk or assafoetida.

Here follow a couple of anecdotes, which you may or may not have heard. A foreigner, sitting at a table, it is said, where one person had taken from the castor the pepper box, and after besprinkling a platter of food with it, had said, "I take it, gentlemen, you all like pepper," took from his pocket his snuffbox, and after sprinkling its contents over the same dish, said, "I take it, gentlemen, you all like snuff."

One of the professors in Yale College told me of a cook, in Philadelphia, who had a wonderful reputation for preparing beefsteak. She was at length prevailed on to part with the secret of her success. She was accustomed, as she said, to rub over the surface of the warm dish, before she laid the cooked steak on it, with a piece of assafœtida.

Boiling is, on the whole, the best way of preparing flesh, fish, or fowl. It is the best, both because it is the simplest, and because it does not ordinarily expose us to the danger of any new play of chemical affinities. If it be objectionable in any way, it is on the ground that it dissipates, if not wastes, a small portion of the nutriment.

Next to this is roasting by the fire. It is customary, in some places, to suspend a piece of meat by a string before a hot fire, with a dripping pan underneath, and frequently turn it till it is done. The surface becoming somewhat dried