The love of good living is in some sort instinctive in women, because it is favorable to beauty.  It has been proved, by a series of rigorously exact observations, that by a succulent, delicate, and choice regimen, the external appearances of age are kept away for a long time.  It gives more brilliancy to the eye, more freshness to the skin, more support to the muscles; and as it is certain in physiology that wrinkles, those formidable enemies of beauty, are caused by the depression of muscle, it is equally true that, other things being equal, those who understand eating are comparatively four years younger than those ignorant of that science.  Painters and sculptors are deeply impenetrated with this truth; for in representing those who practice abstinence by choice or duty as misers or anchorites, they always give them the pallor of disease, the leanness of misery, and the wrinkles of decrepitude.

Good living is one of the main links of society, by gradually extending that spirit of conviviality by which different classes are daily brought closer together and welded into one whole; by animating the conversation, and rounding off the angles of conventional inequality.  To the same cause we can also ascribe all the efforts a host makes to receive his guests properly, as well as their gratitude for his pains so well bestowed.  What disgrace should ever be heaped upon those senseless feeders who, with unpardonable indifference, swallow down morsels of the rarest quality, or gulp with unrighteous carelessness some fine-flavored and sparkling wine.

As a general maxim:  Whoever shows a desire to please will be certain of having a delicate compliment paid him by every well-bred man.

Again, when shared, the love of good living has the most marked influence on the happiness of the conjugal state.  A wedded pair with this taste in common have once a day at least a pleasant opportunity of meeting.  For even when they sleep apart (and a great many do so), they at least eat at the same table, they have a subject of conversation which is ever new, they speak not only of what they are eating, but also of what they have eaten or will eat, of dishes which are in vogue, of novelties, etc.  Everybody knows that a familiar chat is delightful.

Music, no doubt, has powerful attractions for those who are fond of it, but one must set about it—­it is an exertion.  Besides, one sometimes has a cold, the music is mislaid, the instruments are out of tune, one has a fit of the blues, or it is a forbidden day.  Whereas, in the other case, a common want summons the spouses to table, the same inclination keeps them there; they naturally show each other these little attentions as a proof of their wish to oblige, and the mode of conducting their meals has a great share in the happiness of their lives.

This observation, though new in France, has not escaped the notice of Richardson, the English moralist.  He has worked out the idea in his novel ‘Pamela,’ by painting the different manner in which two married couples finish their day.  The first husband is a lord, an eldest son, and therefore heir to all the family property; the second is his younger brother, the husband of Pamela, who has been disinherited on account of his marriage, and lives on half-pay in a state but little removed from abject poverty.