"Excellent! excellent!" said Fred and Forester, both in a voice; whereupon Tom added: "They carn't come it though-stewed clams is not briled iseters!" "No more than mosquitoes are lobsters, which was John Randolph's sole objection to the insects." "And do you really prohibit currant jelly with roast mutton?" "I don't prohibit anything-but I don't eat it, and I think it bad taste to do so. Venison I think the only thing that is improved by it. Canvas-back ducks I think it ruins. Nor should I think C. E.'s plum jelly with grouse one whit better. The sharpness of currant jelly is very suitable to the excessive fat of English park-fed venison; but with any lean meat I think it needless, to say the best. There is but one sauce for any kind of gallinaceous game, when roasted, whether his name be grouse, partridge, pheasant, quail, or wild turkey." "Right, Harry, and that is bread sauce.' "And that is bread sauce; made of the crumb of a very light French roll, stewed in cream and passed through a tamis, one small white onion may be boiled in it, but must be taken out before it is served up to table; a lump of fresh butter as big as a walnut may be added, and a very little black pepper. Let it be thick and hot, and nothing else is needed; unless, indeed, you like a few fried crumbs, done very crisp and brown." "Open that other flask of champagne, Timothy-Tom's glass is empty, and he begins to look angry. Will you take wine with me?" said Heneage, who had hit Tom's feelings to a hair. "In course, I will "-replied Tom joyously, "when Harry gits a talking about his darned stews and fixins, he niver recollects that a body will git dry." "Pass it round, Timothy," said Harry-"that's not a bad move of old Tom's by any means. I believe I was riding one of my hobbies a little hard. But it provokes me to see the good things which are destroyed in this country by bad cookery; and it provokes me yet worse to hear hypocrites and fools talk as if it were wrong for the creature to enjoy the good things designed for his use by a good Creator." "Here come the ruffed grouse, larded and boiled, for boiling which Fred so abused me this morning." "He won't abuse you, when he has once tasted them," said Forester. "It is the best way of cooking them." "Well-yes-they bees kind o' dry meat roasted; but then I don't find no great faults with the dryness-specially when one's got jist this wine to rench his mouth with arter." They are good-with this celery sauce especially." "As is bread sauce to roast, so is celery sauce to boiled game-Q-e-d.” "There is a soupçon of onion in this also, is there not? "I did not say a taste, I said a soupçon—are you answered?" "There ain't no Souchong in it no how-nor no Hyson, nother. He'll be a swearin' it's Java coffee next "—said Tom, waxing again somewhat wrothy. "He is thirsty again," said Frank-"what shall it be? I say hock after this boiled white meat." "Right, Frank, for a thousand!" said Harry, "and after the woodcock, which Tim is bringing in, we'll broach a flask of Burgundy.-Hock with your white game, Burgundy with your brown! But hold, hold! Timothy, Mr. Draw will not touch that hock-it's too thin and cold for his palate." Rot-gut!"-replied Tom-" None o' your hocks nor your clarets for me-there ain't no good things made in France except champagne wine and old Otard brandy." "Well, which of the two will you have, Tom?" "That 'are champagne 's good enough for the likes of me." "Oh! don't be modest, pray. It will hurt you!" "What this here wine?-not what I've drinked on it, no how-I could drink all of a dozen bottles of it, without its hurtin' me a mite." The woodcock followed, were discussed, and pronounced perfect; they were diluted with a flask of Nuits Richelieu, so exquisitely rich and fruity, and of so absolute a bouquet, that even the hostility of fat Tom toward all French wines was drowned in the goblet, thrice the full of which, mantling to the brim, he quaffed in quick succession. The Stilton cheese, red herring, and caviare, which succeeded, again moved his ire, and were denounced as stinkin' trash fit for no one to eat but a darned greedy Englishman; but the bumper of port again mollified him, and he said that if they ate them cussed nasty things jist to make the wine taste the better for the contrast, he didn't see no sense in that, for it was mazin' nice without no nastiness afore it. The devilled biscuits he approved mightily, as creating a wholesome drought, which he applied himself to assuage by emptying three bottles of pale sherry to his own cheek, while the three young men were content with one double magnum of Chateau Latour. But when he emptied the third bottle he was as cool and collected as if he had not tasted a single drop, and was half disposed to run rusty at being summoned into the library to take a cup of coffee and an old cheroot-but here again his wrath was once more assuaged by the curaçoa, of which he drank off half a tumbler, and then professed himself ready for a quiet rubber, while Tim was gittin' supper. Cornelius Conway Felton. BORN in Newbury, Mass., 1807. DIED at Chester, Penn., 1862. THE LIFE OF GREECE. [Greece, Ancient and Modern. 1867.] THE life of Greece was a life of a thousand years. A nation, like an individual, comes upon the stage in the freshness and vigor of youth, passes to its maturity, begins to decay, and finally yields its place to others. It has been recently said that this analogy has no basis in necessary truth; that it is the creation of fancy; that national life is not, like individual life, made up of perishable elements, and has no inherent principle of decay. Perhaps this is theoretically correct, or at least plausible; but the sources of a nation's character and the means of a nation's growth are changeable and exhaustible. The faith and enthusiasm which belong to the period of its youth-the period of construction and development-do not endure forever. Heu prisca fides, was the natural exclamation of the Roman poet, when Rome meant the world; but the ancient Roman spirit was felt to be dying out. The physical resources of a country do not last always; and the crowded population of one epoch dwindles away, leaving another age to wonder how it could ever have been. Forests are cut down; the soil is exhausted; the fertilizing rivers shrink to streamlets, or entirely desert their ancient beds. Perhaps art might resist the gradual exhaustion of nature; but the attractions of new regions draw off the adventurous spirits, and the world is never full. The lines of commercial intercourse change. The great land-roads are deserted for the more expeditious and less expensive passage by sea. New and more convenient centres are found; and imperceptibly the splendors of the ancient seats become dim, and grass grows up through the crevices in the pavements. Power flies to other strongholds, and empires that once ruled the world fall into inward and outward decline. Where are Babylon, Persia, Syria, Egypt? It was not vice alone that destroyed them. It was a combination of causes, physical, moral, and mental. It was the ever-shifting relations of the world. The process goes on around us; but we do not heed it. Old communities are decreasing; young communities are increasing; change, fluctuation, death, are written on all human things; development and dissolution are the law to which men and nations are alike subjected. Some have a longer, others a shorter, term of existence; but the longest is a mere span, nor has any medicine yet been found to arrest or conquer death in either. The oldest nations now on the European stage have not reached the age of Greece and Rome. Farther east, the existence of nations has been artificially protracted; but it is only a life in death. We are less than a century old; and we can hardly infer an endless existence from the unexampled rapidity of our childhood's growth. Rather let us fear the seeds of a premature decay, unless we guard. our national constitution by a wise temperance, justice, moderation, integrity, morality, religion, the laws of national health. The life of Greece, as I have said, may be considered as lasting, effectively, a thousand years. How long was the period which preceded its actual appearance on the stage, how many ages were consumed in combining the elements of its being and character, and preparing it for its great career, it is impossible to say. That this period was neither short nor unimportant, the length, variety, and brilliancy of its historical existence afford us trustworthy proof. The country, as we have seen, was admirably fitted for an energetic development of intellectual power. The face of nature was young and fresh; its features diversified and beautiful. Mountain, hill, and vale; woodland and meadow; rivers, lakes, harbors; fertile plains alternating with hard and uneven soil; a climate of unsurpassed healthfulness and loveliness, and of every variety; the whole surrounded by the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, along whose shores were clustered the noblest seats of ancient culture, these were the framework within which Hellenic life unfolded its fairest and most fragrant flowers. Here was laid the only true foundation of civil society, in the family relation, extending the range of its influence to the remotest branches of kindred. Here were formed political societies, in which constitutions were modelled, embracing every principle of social and political science. Here poetry unfolded itself under the most inspiring circumstances and the most favoring auspices. Here eloquence was applied to its highest and noblest ends, with a consummate mastery of the resources of speech, logic, and intellectual force. Here belief in the existence of the gods gave to every form of nature and every affection of the human heart its relation to the divine nature, and clothed itself in the glories of plastic art. Here sprang up the exact sciences, geometry, astronomy; the intellectual science of the philosophy of the human mind; the moral or ethical science of duty towards God and man. Here a noble system of education, the germs of which were planted in Greece long before history was able to record them, developed the faculties of the mind and the powers of the body in harmonious proportion. Here history, an art closely allied to political liberty, not only began its career, but reached its highest perfection. These are the springs, the momenta of the life of Greece. For the life of a nation grows out of the family affections; it is strengthened by the patriotic spirit, which sees the welfare of the indi vidual bound up in the welfare of the state; the chastisement of suffering and disaster nerves it to brave endurance; the sunshine of national prosperity expands it into luxuriant growth; the teachings of nature give it coloring; the splendors of creative genius exalt and refine it; letters and art remove it from rudeness; poetry kindles its fervor; eloquence heartens it to the great contests which it may have to breast before its day has risen to the height of heaven; philosophy shows its intellectual relations; religion opens its view into the other world; on the breast of Mother Earth the soul and character of a nation lovingly repose; underneath the sky, its teeming energies are wakened into thrills of ecstasy; action tasks its strength, by putting the ideal to the test of reality; and so by unnumbered influences, some too subtile to be expressed in human speech, is evolved by slow degrees that wonderful phenomenon of creative power and goodness, a nation's life. George Barrell Cheever. BORN in Hallowell, Me., 1807. DIED at Englewood, N. J., 1890. SOME OME time ago the writer's notice was arrested by an advertisement in one of the newspapers, which closed with words similar to the following: "INQUIRE AT AMOS GILES'S DISTILLERY." The reader may suppose, if he choose, that the following story was a dream, suggested by that phrase. Deacon Giles was a man who loved money, and was never troubled with tenderness of conscience. His father and his grandfather before him had been distillers, and the same occupation had come to him as an heirloom in the family. The still-house was black with age, as well as with the smoke of furnaces that never went out, and the fumes of tortured ingredients, ceaselessly converted into alcohol. It looked like one of Vulcan's Stithies, translated from the infernal regions into this world. Its stench filled the atmosphere, and it seemed as if drops of poisonous alcoholic perspiration might be made to ooze out from any one of its timbers or clapboards on a slight pressure. Its owner was a treasurer to a Bible Society; and he had a little counting-room in one corner of the distillery where he sold Bibles. He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house." Any one of |