"Mrs. A.: Sauces dangerous, red wines fair, Champagne third rate, company good. Robust members of the league only can venture to sit at Mrs. A.'s table. This hostess has been warned, but hitherto disdains criticism.

"Mrs. B.: Soup always bad ; plates insuf-ciently heated; claret dangerously adulterated ; coffee-cups cold.

"Mrs. C.: Serves tepid coffee, made with essence, in cups that have not been previ-viously warmed. Dinner elaborate ; nothing but entrees; nothing to eat. This table is pretentious and hopeless. Mrs. C. is an old offender. Two habitues of her Tuesday dinner-parties died last year. (N.B. - These unfortunate victims were not members of the league.)

"Mrs. D.: In this house the pepper-mill is unknown; uses ready-made salad-dressing; the fifth chair to the hostess's right hand is in a violent draught.

"Mrs. E.: Cooking excellent; service fair; cellar not deleterious, but far from ideal; Champagne good. This lady, unfortunately, insists upon decorating the table with strongly smelling flowers. Her case is interesting, and recommended to members of the league who have persuasive talent and a taste for evangelizing.

"Mrs. F.: Serves game on silver dishes, with spirit-lamp burning beneath; result, oxidized snipe.

"Mrs. G.: Member of the league; makes great efforts to satisfy the requirements of high gastronomic art; coffee perfect; both the cups, the spoons, and even the sugar, are warmed."

I gave publicity to this, as I thought, brilliant and original idea of an International League, in an article published in a most influential London newspaper about a year ago; but, to my sorrow, nobody has yet offered to become a member, although I did not suggest that any subscription would be levied.

In presence of such indifference, what is to be done? How can we revive the spirit of criticism which alone can rescue the art of cookery from its actual state of decadence? The case seems almost hopeless, for the men of the present generation do not appear to have the sentiment of the table; they know neither its varied resources nor its infinite refinements; their palates are dull, and they are content to eat rather than to dine. The delicate feaster is, nowadays, a rarity, and a man of thirty or thirty-five years of age who knows how to order a dinner scientifically, and to avoid even elementary solecisms, is a still greater rarity. In modern

Paris, formerly the Mecca of gourmands, it is becoming most difficult to dine, and everywhere, even in the best restaurants - we will say no more about private houses - we see the disastrous consequences of the absence of criticism. Both cooking and service suffer. At the Cafe Anglais, while the cooking remains excellent, the waiters are inadequate both in number and in intelligence; the buttons of their waistcoats are frequently denuded of cloth, and their threadbare dress-coats are covered with grease-spots. And yet nobody complains. Our European contemporaries devote no thought to such important details as the training and dressing of waiters, thereby showing themselves to be less civilized than the Russians, whose Tartar waiters are exemplary both in noiseless attention and in appropriate costume of spotless purity.

In the Parisian and European restaurants of the present day the tendency is to prepare the food and to organize the service as if a restaurant were a buffet. The cartes of old, so infinitely varied, have disappeared, to make way for the summary carte du jour. In other words, cookery has become an industry rather than an art, and the object of the cook is to furnish rapidly large quantities of "portions" rather than to prepare daintily a few dishes that will win for him the compliments of connoisseurs. The reasons of this phenomenon are manifold. The hurry and unrest of contemporary life do not conduce to the appreciation of fine cooking, nor is fine cooking possible where it is necessary to prepare food in very large quantities. But why are the restaurants of the very highest class declining in excellence? Can they not count upon the patronage not only of the elite of the gourmands of Paris, but also-thanks to club-trains and swift communications of all kinds - upon the patronage of the gastronomers of the whole world? This is true, but with important reserves. The decline of the art of cookery in the Parisian restaurants is due chiefly to the development of club-life! The men of fashion, leisure, or wealth who would formerly have lived at the restaurants now dine at the table d'hote of their clubs, between two feverish seances at the baccarat-table, and thus the restaurants have lost that nucleus of regular and fastidious customers which, by its readiness to criticise and appreciate, obliged and encouraged the chef to keep up the traditions of the dainty palates of the past. At present the great restaurants of Paris depend for support as much on foreigners as on resident Parisians; their patrons are, therefore, unstable, and the criticism of their cookery less constant and less rigorous than it used to be. Once more the word "criticism" flows from the point of my pen, and sums up the whole gist of the preceding pages. Without criticism there can be no delicate feasting.

How often you hear people say, "Oh! I am not particular. I do not pay any attention to what I eat." Certainly we can conceive that there are men devoid of the senses of taste and smell, just as we can conceive men for whom exquisite flowers, beautiful women, fine pictures, or incomparable statues have no charm. But such men are to be pitied, supposing that we deign to accord them any manifestation of interest whatever. Whether our object be to get out of life the greatest amount of pleasure or the greatest amount of work, or both together, it is good policy to pay great attention to what we eat, and to strive in this, as in all that we undertake, to attain perfection.