l their
winged creatures, except game, from France; and the Surrey fowl and the
Aylesbury duck, the representatives of Great Britain, make no great show
against the champions of Gaul, though the Norfolk turkey holds his own.
A vegetable dish, served by itself and not flung into the gravy of a
joint, forms part of every French dinner, large or small; and in the
battle of the kitchen gardens the foreigners beat us nearly all along
the line, though I think that English asparagus is better than the white
monsters of Argenteuil. A truffled partridge, or the homely _Perdrix au
choux_, or the splendid _Faisan a la Financiere_ show that there are
many more ways of treating a game bird than plain roasting him; and the
peasants of the south of France had crushed the bones of their ducks for
a century before we in London ever heard of _Canard a la Presse_. The
Parisian eats a score of little birds we are too proud to mention in our
cookery books, and he knows the difference between a _mauviette_ and an
_alouette_. Perhaps the greatest abasement of the Briton, whose
ancestors called the French "Froggies" in scorn, comes when his first
morning in Paris he orders for breakfast with joyful expectation a dish
of the thighs of the little frogs from the vineyards. An Austrian
pastry-cook has a lighter hand than a French one, but the Parisian open
tarts and cakes and the _friandises_ and the ice, or _coupe-jacque_ at
the end of the Gallic repast are excellent.

Paris is strewn with the wrecks of restaurants, and many of the
establishments with great names of our grandfathers' and fathers' days
are now only _tavernes_ or cheap _table-d'hote_ restaurants. The Grand
Vefour in the Palais Royal--where the patrons of the establishment in
Louis Philippe's time used to eat off royal crockery, bought from the
surplus stock of the palaces by M. Hamel, cook to the king, and
proprietor of the restaurant--has lost its vogue in the world of
fashion. The present Cafe de Paris has an excellent cook, and is the
supper restaurant where the most shimmering lights of the _demi-monde_
may be seen; but the old Cafe de Paris, at the corner of the Rue
Taitbout, the house which M. Martin Guepet brought to such fame, and
where the _Veau a la Casserole_ drew the warmest praise from our
grandfathers, has vanished. Bignon's, which was a name known throughout
the world, has fallen from its high estate; the Cafe Riche, though it
retains a good restaurant, is not the ol