excellent. The inside of the immense cylinder at
La Croza is a dark cavern, covered by a coating
of snow an inch or two thick. It is an ice-
house of the chemist's fashioning, completely
under man's control; Jack Frost's own larder,
with the cold of arctic winters in its air.
Quarters of lamb, ribs of beef, geese, fowls,
rabbits, fish, are hanging up in it, hard and
fresh. Some of them have been there for six
months.

It is hoped that by this means our Murray
mutton and Saltbush beef may help to sustain
the English workman, and make abundant meals
for the destitute. Ships will require to be
specially fitted; but, with all these charges allowed
for, it is believed that meat may be carried home
and sold at fourpence or fivepence a pound,
leaving after all a better profit than could be
obtained by conveying the beast to the boiling
pot. Doubtless other plans may hereafter be
invented, and doubtless there is here a wide
field for practical scientific investigation. Of
this, at least, we may be now certain, that
the problem which has to be solved is one
that can be solved; and the generation now
living may hope to benefit by a conquest which
shall bring us legs of mutton to substantiate its
glory.

LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE.

DESSERT,

ALAS! for that time, "how far unlike the
now and then," when, little John the Baptists
that we were, with our heads in chargers of
frill, we cared not yet for any of those toys of
humanity, double firsts, mitres, seats in parliament,
fox-hounds, yachts, &c., those unsatisfying
toys, and were supremely happy with what
we had been expecting for several hours—the
fat plump fig with the golden seeds, and the
spoonful of West Indian jelly, which were
solemnly handed over to us after dinner, on
the night of the annual party, by the tall severe
gentleman (friend of the family), who evidently
regarded our arrival from the nursery with the
intensest disgust, thinly covered over by a
miserable varnish of gay benevolence.

On those rare dinner-party days it was our
habit to prowl round the butler's pantry and
keep a bright look out about the top shelves
for those green dishes full of almonds and
raisins, those piles of oranges stuck proudly
with stiff shiny laurel leaves, or those little
morasses of golden green preserve, showing
dark against the sparkling light of cut-glass
dishes, generally supposed in the family to
be of priceless value. The search being
illegal, the very illegality gave it a kind of
charm. It partook of the character of poaching.
It became then a serious speculation
among us junior members of the family what
there would be, at dessert; whether chesnuts,
or if the cherry brandy would be brought
out; if there would be a pine or a melon;
whether the grapes would go round, and ever
reach us; whether we should refuse biscuits
if they were likely to deprive us of a chance of
a second orange, and so on. No stockbrokers
on 'Change, no slippery rogues with a new
martingale at Wiesbaden, ever speculated more
on possibilities than we youngsters did as we
brushed our hair to go down after dinner.
Then was the time that fruits were enchanted
things to us, and always seemed fresh from
fairy land.

The Persian melons with the obscure Arabic
inscriptions on their rinds worked in white
threads, were just those that turned into
Cinderella's coaches. Those leather coated chesnuts
came from Don Quixote's country. Those
little bags of wine, called grapes, grew on
the Rhine—perhaps by the Rats' tower where
the wicked bishop was eaten up. Every fruit
had its story, and was at once a picture and a
legend.

That pleasant little combination dish of fruit
that they bring you after dinner at a French
restaurant, called Les Quatre Mendiants, as
strongly suggests a legend, as does the French
name for aromatic vinegar—the Vinegar of the
Four Thieves. The latter story is, that rubbed
over with this pungent liquid, four thieves of
Marseilles, during the time of the great plague
in that city, succeeded in safely plundering the
dead. The Four Beggars is an equally suggestive
name. Who were these four beggars? In
what reign did they live? Did they ever live?
Were they Holbein men, with great slashed
sleeves, tasselled with bunches of greasy
ribbons—old soldiers of Francis the First,
perhaps, who had wrestled with the Swiss?
Were they not grim brown scarred rascals,
ripe for the gallows, gashed by Bernese and
Oberland halberds, and beaten about by
Burgundian partisans; nimble at cutting purses;
nimming heavy gold chains; snatching silk
cloaks and feathered velvet caps with cameos
and jewels at their sides; dexterous at threading
crowds at preachings and processions—
sturdy, resolute, heartless, merry, desperate,
Heaven-forsaken scoundrels, living for the
moment and under the greenwood tree, with
their heads against the dead deer, sleeping away
the thoughts of the future? Would not Callot
have sharply etched their rags and ribbons, and
Rembrandt have watched them through a prison
grating, while horrible Abhorson was grinding
his axe in the courtyard and blinking at the sun;
would not Salvator Rosa have sketched them as
they lay on a rock under a shattered oak-tree,
gambling with torn and greasy cards for a gold
crucifix and a pearl rosary; would not Teniers
have pictured them revelling at a village inn,
drunk at skittles, tipsy at shuffle-board—
swaggering, swearing, pulling out knives, hugging,
or stabbing!

It was this same dish about which we once
found some stray French verses, written on the
back of a wine list in a café in the Palais
Royal. They ran, if we may be allowed to
roughly paraphrase them, somewhat thus;—and
if pointless, they are at least picturesque: