ton, solemnly; "I never ask above six
persons to dinner, and I never dine out; for a bad dinner, Mr. Pelham, a
bad dinner is a most serious--I may add, the most serious calamity."

"Yes," I replied, "for it carries with it no consolation: a buried
friend may be replaced--a lost mistress renewed--a slandered character
be recovered--even a broken constitution restored; but a dinner, once
lost, is irremediable; that day is for ever departed; an appetite once
thrown away can never, till the cruel prolixity of the gastric agents
is over, be regained. 'Il y a tant de maitresses, (says the admirable
Corneille), 'il n'y a qu'un diner.'"

"You speak like an oracle--like the Cook's Oracle, Mr. Pelham: may I
send you some soup, it is a la Carmelite? But what are you about to do
with that case?"

"It contains" (said I) "my spoon, my knife, and my fork. Nature
afflicted me with a propensity, which through these machines I have
endeavoured to remedy by art. I eat with too great a rapidity. It is
a most unhappy failing, for one often hurries over in one minute, what
ought to have afforded the fullest delight for the period of five. It
is, indeed, a vice which deadens enjoyment, as well as abbreviates it;
it is a shameful waste of the gifts, and a melancholy perversion of the
bounty of Providence: my conscience tormented me; but the habit,
fatally indulged in early childhood, was not easy to overcome. At last
I resolved to construct a spoon of peculiarly shallow dimensions, a fork
so small, that it could only raise a certain portion to my mouth, and a
knife rendered blunt and jagged, so that it required a proper and just
time to carve the goods 'the gods provide me.' My lord, 'the lovely
Thais sits beside me' in the form of a bottle of Madeira. Suffer me to
take wine with you?"

"With pleasure, my good friend; let us drink to the memory of the
Carmelites, to whom we are indebted for this inimitable soup."

"Yes!" I cried. "Let us for once shake off the prejudices of sectarian
faith, and do justice to one order of those incomparable men, who,
retiring from the cares of an idle and sinful world, gave themselves
with undivided zeal and attention to the theory and practice of the
profound science of gastronomy. It is reserved for us, my lord, to pay
a grateful tribute of memory to those exalted recluses, who, through
a long period of barbarism and darkness, preserved, in the solitude of
their cloisters, whatever of Roman luxury and cl