Make a high Vol-au-vent crust. Prepare some quenelles made of fish-any white fish would do (lemon-soles, whiting, haddock, gurnet, etc.); some white bottled mushrooms preserved in salt, not vinegar (this is most important); some small pieces of boiled fish. Mix these together in a white sauce made of butter, flour (slightly cooked first, but not coloured); then add the milk, warm the whole together, and pour it into the crust.

A rather nice cake for luncheon can be made as follows:-Take three eggs, put them into the scale and weigh against them three equal parts of flour, sugar, and butter. Then break the eggs and put the yelks into a basin, melt the butter, add the flour and sugar, and mix the whole. At the last moment add the whites of the eggs, beat slightly, and put it into the oven in a round flat tin with a thin rim. Serve it on a large round plate. Fresh-water fish, so rare now in England, though the traces of tanks and ponds are always to be found in the neighbourhood of old abbeys and monasteries, are still much eaten in the country in France. Pike and carp marinaded are constantly seen at table. Marinading is far too little done in England; it is most useful for many things-hares, venison, beef, and grouse-and it preserves the meat for some time, if that is what is wanted. It is described in 'Dainty Dishes,' but I give you also the following receipt:German Receipt for Roast Hare.-Take a bottle of common white wine (or any remnants of already opened bottles); cut up onions, carrots, herbs, bay-leaf, a clove or two; and pour the whole over the raw hare in a shallow baking-pan, basting it well every few hours in a cool place for two or three days. Then prepare the hare. Take off the head, lard it well, and put it into the roasting-pan with a little dripping and more onions, carrots, herbs, salt, and pepper. When roasted, take it out of the oven, pour off all the grease, and replace it by half a breakfast-cupful of thick sour cream, which is to be mixed with the gravy at the bottom of the pan. Replace it in the oven, baste well with the mixture, and serve just as it is, pouring the sauce over the hare.

Chervil is always used in France for spring decoration of fish, cold meat, etc. It is much hardier and more easily grown than Parsley, and lives through the coldest weather if covered up with sticks and fern. In severe winters Parsley sometimes fails in English gardens.

The life in the little French town near which we were was like a page out of a volume of Balzac's 'Vie de Province,' so full of character, and, in a sense, so far away and old-fashioned.

I had the privilege of visiting and hearing the story of one of that charming type, the French old maid. I sat in her kitchen whilst her bonne prepared the Sunday dinner for herself, an adopted child, and the inevitable male friend, be he doctor, solicitor, or priest. The soup was maigre and economical:-One large onion cut up and fried in butter in a saucepan over a very slow fire till a nice yellow-brown. Then the saucepan filled up with boiling water from a kettle, and allowed to cook half an hour. Then strained, and a sufficient quantity of Vermicelli added. Cook for fifteen or twenty minutes more, and serve. A chicken, prepared as before described, was roasted for an hour and a half before a slow wood fire, basted with butter all the time, and served with the butter round it as gravy. The salad was carefully picked young Watercress (never used by itself for salads in England), with oil and vinegar, and a hard-boiled egg cut into small quarters laid on the top. (Few know that Watercress can be grown in ordinary garden soil, in half-shade, if sown every spring.) The wine was good, and the sweets came from the pastry-cook.

During our short stay in France I saw several gardens, but nothing at all interesting. As we drove through the villages I noticed specimens of a white variety of Iberis gibraltarica (Candytuft) grown in pots, carefully pruned and cared for, standing in the windows of the cottages. Managed in this way, it made a very charming spring pot-plant. I have never seen it so treated in England. It is not quite hardy. I brought home cuttings, but they all died. I have now several plants which I have grown from seed. From their appearance I do not think they will flower well till they are two or three years old; they will want hard cutting back directly after flowering.

It was early in the year, and no sort of spring gardening was aimed at in the large bare beds cut in rather coarse grass. I think turf is overdone in England; but why it should be attempted at all where it grows badly, and is rarely successful, I cannot imagine. How infinitely prettier it would be to have earth planted with shrubs and low-growing, creeping plants, with grass paths ! The shrubs that I saw in France seemed to me as much over-pruned-indeed stiffly cut back in spring-as they are under-pruned in England.