The great book on the palate is M. Brillat-Savarin’s “Physiologie du Goût.” Among other important facts established in this world-renowned treatise, there is one of great importance to ladies. “The penchant,” says this profound writer, “of the fair sex for gourmandise has in it something of the nature of instinct, for gourmandise is favorable to beauty. A train of exact and rigid observations have demonstrated that a succulent, delicate and careful regimen repels to a distance, and for a length of time, the external appearances of old age. It gives more brilliancy to the eyes, more freshness to the skin, more support to the muscles; and as it is certain in physiology, that it is the depression of the muscles which causes wrinkles, those formidable enemies of beauty, it is equally true to say that, cateris paribus, those who understand eating are comparatively ten years younger than those who are strangers to this science.”
We have all heard that poets are born, not made; but M. Brillat-Savarin makes the same assertion respecting gourmands. The art of eating, it seems, cannot be acquired. Those who have an original aptitude to enjoy the luxuries of the table, are described as having “broad faces, sparkling eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips, and round chins. The females are plump, rather pretty than handsome, with a tendency to embonpoint. It is under this exterior that the pleasantest guests are to be found; they accept all that is offered, eat slowly, and taste with reflection. They never hurry away from the places where they have been well treated; and you are sure of them for the evening, because they know all the games and pastimes which form the ordinary accessories of a gastronomic meeting. Those, on the contrary, to whom nature has refused an aptitude for the enjoyments of taste, have long faces, long noses, and large eyes; whatever their height, they have always in their tournure a character of elongation. They have black and straight hair, and are above all deficient in embonpoint; it is they who invented trowsers. The women whom nature has affected with the same misfortune are angular, get tired at table, and live on tea and scandal.”
In the same strain he speaks of eprouvettes, “dishes of acknowledged flavor, of such undoubted excellence, that their bare appearance ought to excite in a human being, properly organized, all the faculties of taste; so that all those in whom, in such cases, we perceive neither the flush of desire nor the radiance of ecstasy, may be justly noted as unworthy of the honors of the sitting and the pleasures attached to it.”
As an awful warning to the eaters of America, it should be mentioned that Napoleon owed his ruin to his habits of rapid eating. At Borodino and at Leipsic he was prevented from pushing his successes to a victorious conclusion, solely from the indecision and weakness of mind proceeding from a disordered stomach. On the third day at Dresden—we have it on the authority of the poet Hoffman—he again evinced a lack of his usual energy, owing to his having eat part of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with onions—“a dish,” says the writer in the Quarterly, “only to be paralleled by the pork chops which Messrs. Thurtell and Co. regaled on, after completing the murder of their friend Mr. Weare.” One instance of Napoleon’s good taste, and the only one, we have reluctantly been compelled to give up as a fiction. Tom Moore, in “The Fudge Family in Paris,” mentions Chambertin Burgundy, the most delicious wine in the world, as the “pet tipple of Nap;” but the Quarterly asserts that it was never taken on serious occasions, for after the battle of Waterloo there were found in his carriage two bottles—empty—one of which was marked Malaga, the other Rum.
We commend this pleasant volume to all readers who desire a cosy companion, full of wit, and anecdote, and information, and stimulating just as much thought as the brain can comfortably bear in the hot summer months.
The Napoleon Ballads. By Bon Gaultier. The Poetical Works of Louis Napoleon. Now first Translated into English. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 18mo.
The idea of this volume is capital, but it is wretchedly carried out. The name of Bon Gaultier, a name associated with wit that “sparkles like salt in fire,” raises anticipations doomed to be dismally disappointed. If written by him, he must have been muddy with beer during the hours of composition; but we presume that the English publisher had as little right to put his name to the volume as translator as he had to put that of Louis Napoleon as the author. One of the few good things in the collection is the Decree which prefaces it. It runs thus:
“Louis Napoleon:
Prince President of the Republic.