other lands must know.  Captain-Marryatt’s allegation that the tables are good in the large towns, has nothing to do with the merits of this question.  The larger American towns are among the best eating and drinking portions of the world.  But what are they as compared to the whole country?  What are the public tables, or the tables of the refined, as compared to the tables of the mass, even in these very towns?  All things are to be judged of by the rules, and not by the exceptions.  Because a small portion of the American population understand what good cookery is, it by no means follows that all do.  Who would think of saying that the people of England live on white bait and venison, because the nobility and gentry (the aldermen inclusive) can enjoy both, in the seasons, ad libitum? I suspect this Mr. Cooper knows quite as well what he is about, when writing of America, as any European.  If pork fried in grease, and grease pervading half the other dishes, vegetables cooked without any art, and meats done to rags, make a good table, then is this Mr. Cooper wrong, and Captain Marryatt right, and vice versa.  As yet, while nature has done so much in America, art has done but little.  Much compared with numbers and time, certainly, but little as compared with what numbers and time have done elsewhere.  Nevertheless, I would make an exception in favour of America, as respects the table of one country, though not so much in connection with the coarseness of the feeding as in the poverty of the food.  I consider the higher parts of Germany to be the portions of the Christian world where eating and drinking are in the most primitive condition; and that part of this great republic, which Mr. Alison Would probably call the State of New England, to come next.  In abundance and excellence of food in the native form, America is particularly favoured; Baltimore being at the very nucleus of all that is exquisite in the great business of mastication.  Nevertheless, the substitution of cooks from the interior of New England, for the present glistening tenants of her kitchens, would turn even that paradise of the epicure into a sort of oleaginous waste.  Enough of cookery.

Lucy did not appear at prayers next morning!  I felt her absence as one feels the certainty of some dreadful evil.  Breakfast was announced; still Lucy did not appear.  The table was smoking and hissing; and Romeo Clawbonny, who acted as the everyday house-servant, or footman, had several times intimated that it might be well to commence operations, as a cold breakfast was very cold comfort.

“Miles, my dear boy,” observed Mr. Hardinge, after opening the door to look for the absentee half a dozen times, “we will wait no longer.  My daughter, no doubt, intends to breakfast with Grace, to keep the poor dear girl company; for it is dull work to breakfast by oneself.  You and I miss Lucy sadly, at this very moment, though we have each other’s company to console us.”