physic, and every comfort in your power. Tender assiduity about an invalid is half a cure; it is a balsam to the mind, which has a most powerful effect on the body, soothes the sharpest pains, and strengthens beyond the richest cordial.

Ye who think that to protect and encourage virtue is the best preventive from vice, reward your female servants liberally.

Charity should begin at home. Prevention is preferable to cure—but I have no objection to see your names ornamenting the lists of subscribers to foundling hospitals and female penitentiaries.25-* Gentle reader, for a definition of the word “charity,” let me refer you to the 13th Chapter of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians.

“To say nothing of the deleterious vapours and pestilential exhalations of the charcoal, which soon undermine the health of the heartiest, the glare of a scorching fire, and the smoke so baneful to the eyes and the complexion, are continual and inevitable dangers: and a cook must live in the midst of them, as a soldier on the field of battle surrounded by bullets, and bombs, and Congreve’s rockets; with this only difference, that for the first, every day is a fighting day, that her warfare is almost always without glory, and most praiseworthy achievements pass not only without reward, but frequently without thanks: for the most consummate cook is, alas! seldom noticed by the master, or heard of by the guests; who, while they are eagerly devouring his turtle, and drinking his wine, care very little who dressed the one, or sent the other.”—Almanach des Gourmands.

This observation applies especially to the SECOND COOK, or first kitchen maid, in large families, who have by far the hardest place in the house, and are worse paid, and truly verify the old adage, “the more work, the less wages.” If there is any thing right, the cook has the praise—when there is any thing wrong, as surely the kitchen maid has the blame. Be it known, then, to honest John Bull, that this humble domestic is expected by the cook to take the entire management of all ROASTS, BOILS, FISH, and VEGETABLES; i. e. the principal part of an Englishman’s dinner.

The master, who wishes to enjoy the rare luxury of a table regularly well served in the best style, must treat his cook as his friend—watch over her health26-* with the tenderest care, and especially be sure her taste does not suffer from her stomach being deranged by bilious attacks.

Besides understanding the management of the spit, the stewpan, and the rolling-pin, a COMPLETE COOK must know how to go to market, write legibly, and keep accounts accurately.

In well-regulated private families the most convenient custom seems to be, that the cook keep a house-book, containing an account of the miscellaneous articles she purchases; and the butcher’s, baker’s, butterman’s, green-grocer’s, fishmonger’s, milkman’s, and washing bills are brought in every Monday; these it is the duty of the cook to examine, before she presents them to her employer every Tuesday morning to be discharged.

The advantage of paying such bills weekly is incalculable: among others the constant check it affords against any excess beyond the sum allotted for defraying them, and the opportunity it gives of correcting increase of expense in one week by a prudent retrenchment in the next. “If you would live even with the world, calculate your expenses at half your income—if you would grow rich, at one-third.”

It is an excellent plan to have a table of rules for regulating the ordinary expenses of the family, in order to check any innovation or excess which otherwise might be introduced unawares, and derange the proposed distribution of the annual revenue.

To understand the economy of household affairs is not only essential to a woman’s proper and pleasant performance of the duties of a wife and a mother, but is indispensable to the comfort, respectability, and general welfare of all families, whatever be their circumstances.

The editor has employed some leisure hours in collecting practical hints for instructing inexperienced housekeepers in the useful

Art of providing comfortably for a family;

which is displayed so plainly and so particularly, that a young lady may learn the delectable arcana of domestic affairs, in as little time as is usually devoted to directing the position of her hands on a piano-forte, or of her feet in a quadrille—this will enable her to make the cage of matrimony as comfortable as the net of courtship was charming. For this purpose he has contrived a Housekeeper’s Leger, a plain and easy plan of keeping accurate accounts of the expenses of housekeeping, which, with only one hour’s attention in a week, will enable you to balance all such accounts with the utmost exactness; an acceptable acquisition to all who admit that order and economy are the basis of comfort and independence.

It is almost impossible for a cook in a large family, to attend to the business of the kitchen with any certainty of perfection, if employed in other household concerns. It is a service of such importance, and so difficult to perform even tolerably well, that it is sufficient to engross the entire attention of one person.

“If we take a review of the qualifications which are indispensable in that highly estimable domestic, a GOOD COOK, we shall find that very few deserve that name.”27-*

“The majority of those who set up for professors of this art are of mean ability, selfish, and pilfering every thing they can; others are indolent and insolent. Those who really understand their business (which are by far the smallest number), are too often either ridiculously saucy, or insatiably thirsty; in a word, a good subject of this class is a rara avis indeed!”

“God sends meat,”—who sends cooks?28-* the proverb has long saved us the trouble of guessing. Vide Almanach des Gourmands, p. 83.

Of what value then is not this book, which will render every person of common sense a good cook in as little time as it can be read through attentively!

If the masters and mistresses of families will sometimes condescend to make an amusement of this art, they will escape numberless disappointments, &c. which those who will not, must occasionally inevitably suffer, to the detriment of both their health and their fortune.

I did not presume to offer any observations of my own, till I had read all that I could find written on the subject, and submitted (with no small pains) to a patient and attentive consideration of every preceding work, relating to culinary concerns, that I could meet with.

These books vary very little from