pot-herbs, mallows, sorrel, good to chew of
mornings tasting, in the time of pestilence,
and the juice whereof maketh a pleasant
sauce for meats,—endive, and chicory, dandelion
—good to be used in pottage,—borage
and bugloss, burnet—effectual against the
plague, and other affects of the heart, the
leaves being put into wine, yield unto it an
excellent relish in drinking,—cinquefoil,
strawberry leaves, violet leaves and flowers,
borage and rose blossoms—good as violet
flowers in a salad,—gilliflowers, marigolds,
tansy, wormwood, filipendula, and many more
herbs were used in the kitchens of our
forefathers two or three centuries ago.

Now, lastly, of the manner of diet. " There
is a threefold diet, accurate or precise, vulgar
or common, and sub-vulgar." " Don't eat
without appetite," says Dr. Venner. " Sauces
may be used to correct tendencies of
constitution; if used to provoke excess in eating,
they beget disease. Meats most desired,
although apparently less wholesome, are to
be preferred. The use of two competent
meals in a day, viz., of dinner and supper, is
generally best for them that are within the
limits of twenty-five and sixty years, leading
a studious or sedentary life. But such as
use much exercise," says the physician, "I
advise not to be altogether fasting till dinner,
but to break their fast with this threefold
caution, that they find their stomachs to be
clean and empty, that the breakfast be
slender, and that of meats of light digestion,
and that it be taken about four hours before
dinner. The plethoric should not only
eschew the use of breakfasts, but also often
content themselves with one meal in a day,
and that a supper, taken at least three hours
before bed-time. But two moderate meals
are to be preferred to one that is excessive."
"Our usual time for dinner in all places is
about eleven of the clock; and for supper, in
most places, about six. I do well approve of
the distance between meals, and also of the
allowance of an hour's space for a meal; but
if students that may command the time, and
others also that lead a generous life, shall
alter the time for refection, as to dine about
ten, and to sup about five or six, they shall
have my better approbation. This would
shorten the long fast in the morning, allow
more time for digestion of the dinner, and
lessen the chance of nocturnal suffering from
vapours that arise out of the meats concocting
in the stomach." Children and old men
may take three or four meals in a day. When
eating, do not cogitate, but chew. If the
dinner be larger than ordinary, let the supper
be less, or none at all. Fish and flesh do not
accord, they ought not, therefore, to be eaten
at one meal. " Eschew this evil custom, and
relinquish it to belly-gods, who choose to live
fettered with gouts, racked with fevers, and
tormented with stones."

The bread that we eat with meats, "ought
to be double to the flesh, so much and half
so much as of eggs, and threefold unto fish,
especially of the moister sort, that the
superfluous moisture of it may, by the siccity of
the bread be attempered." Healthy and
strong men should eat more at supper than
at dinner, because after supper they may rest
from their exertions. Gross and phlegmatic
men should make the dinner their chief meal,
for fear of a sudden suffocation in sleep. If
the stomach be moist, do not begin a meal
with drink, but if there be excess of dryness
it is well to do so. If there be broths or
pottage at table, they are to be preferred
before drink, and always taken instead
thereof, at the beginning of a meal. "Let
there be no drink taken between dinner and
supper, except only a dilutive draught of
white or Rhenish wine, of stale beer, or of
sack, when the meat is concocted; that will
be three or four hours after the meal. This
cleans out the stomach, and promotes the
passage of the meats concocted through the
mesaraic veins into the liver."

To the breakfast usual in his day, the
Doctor makes his last objection: "The
custom of drinking in the mornings fasting a
large draught of white wine, of Rhenish
wine, or of beer, hath almost with all men so
far prevailed, as that they judge it a principal
means of preserving health." To the
convelling of this bad custom the Doctor sets
himself, but grants that "to drink mornings
fasting a draught of muscadel or malmsey,
and also to eat toasts of fine manchet bread
sopped therein, is no bad breakfast for old
folks, I suppose."

FINE SHAVING.

THAT terrible element, decay, lurks in
all things earthly. It would be a trite
thing in these days to sermonise concerning
mortality, taking for text the ravages of
moth and worm; how empires crumble and
fall away; how great workers are forgotten
within a generation; how noble structures,
cloud-capped towers, and gorgeous palaces,
pyramids and parthenons, are sapped and
pulverised; how the pomp, the great view,
the show, are but of the hour only,
unenduring, evanescent,—such would be but a
stale theme for the lay preacher to dwell on.
And yet it is hard that Packwood, at least
Packwood, should not live!

Why is it to be an eternal dispensation,
that the good men do, shall be always
interred with their bones? That because they
chance to be unsung, unhymned—quia vate
carent sacro, as the heathen has it—they
shall sleep in Lethe? There have lived
braves before Agamemnon; fighting men
before Napoleon; thinkers, workers, doers,
all suffering from this unequal law, all
because fate has not found them a chronicler,
iniquitous dispensation! Weave then a
fresh garland of immortelles, and lay them
lightly on the grave of Packwood!