their incomes can afford, which bring on higher taxes. They are subjected to many privations, of which neither the higher nor lower classes know any thing of, and often to the caprice of one bad servant, who robs and leaves them.

Sea-faring men are too well acquainted with the utility of fresh provisions, not to seize every opportunity of procuring them. Soups, however, I am too partial to, to omit any occasion of recommending. I have inserted many vari. ous modes of making fish soups, which they will find both palatable and wholesome. On long voyages, they should carry prepared skins of beef and veal, for making soup; and, indeed, the skins of the cattle killed on board, may always be cured as per receipt ; as also other meats, after the manner of curing the pork and geese in Languedoc, where hardly so much salt as is necessary for the palate is used; and, were that meat to be drest as ragouts, only half the stowage would be necessary, the bones being ab stracted; and the flour and other farinaceous ingredients would be more nourishing and less heating, than quantities of salt animal food. A portion of salted provisions might be added at pleasure. Sour krout may be made on board, from an excellent receipt. The pickles should not, of course, be made in copper vessels, or greened with any injurious substance. Butter, too, may always be cured without salt, in the French way. (See Receipts.)

Sauces and ketchups are indispensable in the kitchens of the rich; they are also a great saving and comfort to the lower classes, particularly to artisans, who labour from morning till night, with curbed bodies, over work that is of an unwholesome tendency. To this valuable class, I anxiously wish to give instruction with respect to proper diet. Were they to use soups, and little ragouts, seasoned with ketchups, they would not only be better fed than by chops and porter, which heat and bring on that debility, which afterwards rarely admits of cure; but they would be relieved from the desire for fermented liquors, and allowed, by diminution of expense, now and then to take some exercise in the open air, so necessary to health and comfort.

Where a good table is kept, it is a great saving to make ketchups at home; besides, were they really as expensive as those from the shops, the assurance of having them

without adulteration would be a great satisfaction. The articles for making these ketchups, when bought at the proper season, are very reasonable, and a poor workman ought to forego a few quarts of porter, for what will assist in giving him many a comfortable meal, during the short, hard, cold days of winter. To men that labour in the fields, health and appetite give a zest to food, however coarse; but a poor man, labouring all day, as above described, Sunday often not excepted, requires some little additional

zest.

I am quite delighted to see the cheap coffee shops establishing in London: but what a blessing would it be to the people if gin shops were suppressed. But, as this may not be possible, I would humbly suggest, that no spirits be sold under a quart. The reduction of the price of spirits, though, in the end, it must tend to diminish the consumption, still will be very detrimental in its im mediate consequences on the very poor. This, of course, would be prevented by either of the above plans. When the duty was taken off spirits, under Charles the Second, what excesses were not the result! The sign posts held out drunkenness for one penny, and straw to lie on gratis!

From the following pages, the humane may assist the poor, by making them as comfortable, in their way, as the rich, and, with a little good cookery and good management, easy and respectable. They should particularly impress upon artisans the use of onions and garlic, which greatly repairs the exhaustion of the lungs, occasioned by such occupations, as gilding, chemistry, house painting, tin soldering, brass work, shoemaking, tailoring, baking, and many others. Those employed in such occupations, require to have well drest food, that they may not wish for fermented liquors, which are poison to them. Fine thick oat-meal gruel, with plenty of sugar, to which may be added a little butter, is a nutritive repast, which they would soon come to relish. Is it any wonder, from their confinement, that so many fall into consumptions and die?

Let those who distribute charities, and who ought consequently to know who those are that deserve them, attend the markets in the evening, from seven to ten, and especially on Saturday evenings, when things are dearer; the dealers knowing that the people have money, and must spend it. I cannot more strongly show their

silly extravagance, and their pride in paying high prices, than by the following little affair, which took place under my own observation. A poor woman, on a Friday evening, had bought some pigeons, at fivepence a-piece. Another woman, all in rags, came up to her, and asked her the price of them. She answered sixpence. And very cheap too, replied the other! and went immediately and tendered her sixpence for one. I told her, (for which, indeed, I was nearly mobbed,) that the other woman had paid but fivepence. Indignant at my interposition, she said she would certainly pay the sixpence, as it was well worth it, and that it would be tenpence to-morrow.

It is a notorious fact, that the poor people pay much more than the rich. As to tea, which is one of their greatest comforts, and a harmless one it is, if a poor woman goes to buy it, she approaches the counter as if it were for charity, and receives for her money the most abominable trash. But the other day, I ordered a servant to go for some tea, to one of the most respectable houses in London. She, however, sent a char-woman, and, though the quantity was considerable, the stuff she brought was, in the most unqualified sense, undrinkable. I sent the servant herself back with it, and they changed it, with excuses and assurances, that it was a mistake. When the poor go to market, they are absolutely blackguarded into buying; and, though they are forced to pay much more than the middling classes, they receive, as if it were a charitable contribution, the meat, that is absolutely thrown at them. In their coals, and in every thing else, they are in the same manner brow-beaten and cheated- cheated in the quality, price, and measure. What wonder is it, then, that they are degraded below savages and slaves? for they suffer the privations and degradations of both, without enjoying the independence of the one, or being lulled by the apathy of the other.

The best way to ascertain the real state of poor people is to send persons whom they do not suspect to visit them. A visitor of this kind, going into a poor woman's house at market-time, on a Saturday evening, found nobody at home. She seated herself in a corner, and waited. The woman came in, and placed on the table (on which lay a society's ticket for a blanket and sheet)

a lump of butter of the value of 3s., a large fat goose, sauce, apples, celery, and sweet herbs. The stranger stepped forward, and said she was afraid she was mistaken; that she was the bearer of 5s. to a poor woman of her name. The woman seemed ashamed, stood aside, and gladly got rid of her visitor. This is instanced not to check benevolent feelings, but to regulate the exercise of them. One shilling earned by labour is better than three gotten in charity. With the first there is every inducement to sobriety and economy; the latter always tends to enervation, and too generally to riot. Much better than to give money would it be to read to the poor (as they believe what is printed in a large book) of the poisonous things that are put into porter, and then to send them a little hot gruel, with a little sugar and nutmeg, rice, or vegetable soup. Use them in their prejudices like children, and when they come to taste your advice in their comforts, you may open their minds, and lead them to look forward to higher things. I am induced to press this subject, as a publication of this kind may fall into the hands of some that may be disposed to give advice, and which, perhaps, was never before thought of by masters and mistresses who have work-people in their pay. The knowledge of these little comforts, so easily procured, would operate usefully among that class of the community, whose languor often forces them into excesses, which might almost always be avoided, if their home were made comfortable, and their diet nourishing and exhilarating.

Let something be done to put down spirit and porter shops, and supply their place with coffee, small beer, and soup-shops. What a comfortable breakfast would a pint of nice soup make, with a pennyworth of bread, instead of a pot of porter. The poor might live very comfortably on the price of the porter they drink. On the continent, with a warm climate, and bread, wine, and fruit cheap, they know that fermented liquors are not good alone; therefore the poor have meat cooked in this way in the street and in shops. Who does not know what porter and gin, as well as bread, contain? but the evil might be abated, by places of proper accommodation, with ovens and furnaces erected from distance to dis.

tance, for the convenience of the poor; and those houses might be let to respectable people, who would supply such as chose with home-made bread and ale.

When a cook comes into a family, she ought to be examined upon her style, her ideas of management, what cookery-books she has been used to, what her opinion is of them, and of brass and copper vessels. Enquire of her whether such and such things be proper? Ask her if she uses bay? how she makes up the fires? if she understands fats? if she attempts filtering or purifying the water? how she preserves fresh, or recovers tainted meat? what are her ideas upon the management of servants? Simple questions of this nature, though they may appear to the inexperienced frivolous, are the only means of ascertaining the qualifications of the cook, at the same time that it lets her see her mistress's opinion and knowledge in household concerns, and prevents causes of discontent and change. If money is entrusted to her to disburse, every day's expence should be made up, and laid in the evening upon the mistress's table, whether she has time to look at it or no. Surely there is nothing in all this mean or shabby, but the very reverse. It is by such management that, to use the words of Solomon, "the family is clothed in scarlet and fine linen, and that the master sits in honour at the gate." Johnson prefers in a wife the knowledge of domestic economy to a fortune of 10,000l. What will the young ladies say to this?"Oh! the foolish gourmand! Did he know how many comforts 10,000l. can procure?" Yes, but we know also how soon 20,000l. might be thrown away by want of management. Rawleigh, quoting Beersheba's advice to king Lemuel, and many others, concludes thus: "Have, therefore, ever more care that thou be beloved of thy wife, rather than thyself be besotted on her; and thou shalt judge of her love by these two observations; first, if thou perceive that she hath care of thy estate, and exercise herself therein; the other, if she study to please thee, and be sweet in her conversation." An experienced head of a family, to whom I submitted these observations on economy, remarked that she had generally found servants more attentive to order, when once established, than mistresses, who, when they think of length of bills and shortness of income, are ready enough to