Johnson's definition of gin is strangely incorrect: "the spirit drawn by distillation from juniper-berries," which are merely the flavouring. Sir John Hill, who was professionally better qualified than Johnson, gives no better account of Geneva, when he describes it as "a kind of spirit distilled from the juniper-berry: what is commonly sold is no better an ingredient than oil of turpentine put into the still with a little common salt and the coarsest spirit." This shows the adulteration of gin to have been common a century since. Pure gin should consist, as Hollands does, solely of rectified corn-spirit flavoured with juniper-berries; but Dr. Hassall shows that, in Britain, gin is flavoured with various other substances, as coriander, cardamom, and caraway seeds, grains of paradise, angelica-root, crushed almond-cake, liquorice-powder, orangepeel, which ingredients form what is known in the trade as "gin-flavouring," and "the doctor." West-country, or Plymouth Gin, is flavoured with German juniper-berries, calamus-root, and sulphuric acid.

Gin is a favourite nursery remedy, in the gripes of infants; and the sensible practitioner will not quarrel very vehemently with the practice, provided the spirit be only given by a few drops at a time, and not too frequently repeated.-Dr. Macaulay's Dict. Med.

The substitution of Gin in the place of Beer may be reckoned one of the drawbacks of the Revolution. In consequence of the popular passion for the new stimulant, drunkenness grew a raging vice during the prosperous reign of George II. According to the inquiry of the magistrates in 1736, there were, within the limits of Westminster, the Tower, and Finsbury divisions, exclusive of the City and Southwark, 7044 places where gin was publicly sold by retail, besides what was privately sold in garrets, cellars, and back rooms. 'Painted boards," Smollett says, were put up, inviting people to be drunk for a penny, and deaddrunk for twopence." Cellars were provided, strewed with straw, to which were conveyed the wretches overwhelmed with intoxication, and in which they lay until they had recovered some use of their faculties. It was to restrain these excesses that the licence and spirit duties were raised. But the populace broke through all restraint: gin was publicly

* Sir John Hill, born about 1716, began life as apprentice to an apothecary, in London, in which capacity he gained some knowledge of botany; and being possessed of lively parts, industry, and impudence, he managed to obtain in his lifetime no little notoriety. He pushed his way into fashionable life; published a scandalous newspaper, called the Inspector; made, puffed, and sold quack medicines; and yet found time to compose voluminous works, principally on botanical subjects. He failed in obtaining admission into the Royal Society, and in consequence, published a Review of its works, in ridicule of that body. He obtained a Scotch diploma of medicine, and assumed the title of Sir John in virtue of knighthood presented to him by the King of Sweden, in exchange for a present of his botanical publications. He had his "Physic Garden" in the Bayswater-road, where he prepared from plants his tinctures, essences, &c., one of the latest being his "Balsam of Honey." These gardens became public tea-gardens, and are now the site of several noble houses.

sold in the streets without either licence or duty; and the laws were altogether set at defiance.-(See Wade's England's Greatness, p. 397.)

It was to expose these enormities that Hogarth, in 1751, engraved his two prints of masterly satire, Beer-street and Gin-lane (in St. Giles's): for the latter, the Rev. James Townley, Master of Merchant-Taylors' School, wrote:

Gin! cursed fiend, with fury fraught,

Makes human race a prey;

It enters by a deadly draught,

And steals our life away.

Virtue and truth, driven to despair,
Its rage compels to fly,

But cherishes, with hellish care,

Theft, Murder, Perjury.

Damn'd cup, that on the vitals preys,

That liquid fire contains,

Which madness to the heart conveys,

And rolls it through the veins.

In a kindred tone has George Cruikshank told the melancholy tale of "the Bottle," and its miseries, in his set of large woodcuts, for the walls of the workshop and the cottage.

It has been oddly said that the word gin is associated with a name famous in poetry and romance-Ginera, or Gineura, the favourite lady of Ariosto; which caused him to immortalize the juniper-tree, as Petrarch did the laurel. A scientific wag has defined oxygen to be pure gin, and hydrogen gin-and-water.

In Douglas Jerrold's play of The Bill-sticker, the principal character (the Bill-sticker) falls drunk, at full length, upon the floor. "What do you call that?" says a bystander. "A tremendous fall in gin!" is the confident reply.

Summer Drinks.

Mint Julep is brandy-and-water, sweetened with pounded white sugar, in which are stuck leaves of fresh-gathered mint. Pounded or planed Wenham Lake Ice is put into the tumbler, and the drink is imbibed through a straw or glass tube. At the American bars, the brandyand-water is first put into a large silver or glass goblet, then the ice, planed or broken very small; pounded white sugar is then dashed over them with a tablespoon; the whole is then violently shaken, or tossed from one goblet to another, and served up in a clean goblet; fresh mint is stuck in the ice, a piece of lemon-peel hangs over the brim, and a straw is put into the glass.

Sherry Cobbler is made as Mint Julep, sans lemon-peel or mint, sherry being substituted for brandy; and when served, nutmeg is grated over the top.

Stone Wall, or Fence, is an English Cider Cup, i.e., cider, wine, brandy, &c., served with ice and a straw.

Gin Sling is the same as the above, but with gin as the spirit.

Mississippi Punch. One glass of Outard brandy, half ditto of Jamaica rum, a tablespoonful of arrack, a quarter of a lemon, and a tablespoonful of pounded white sugar; fill the tumbler with water and ice, let it be thoroughly mixed, and serve with a straw. The mixture is made "right away," in half the time it takes to relate the process.

Sherry Cobbler (Canadian receipt). Take a lump of ice; fix it at the edge of a board; rasp it with a tool made like a drawing-knife or carpenter's plane, set face upwards. Collect the fine raspings-the fine raspings, mind-in a capacious tumbler; pour thereon two glasses of good sherry, and a good spoonful of powdered white sugar, with a few small bits, not slices, of lemon, about as big as a gooseberry. Stir with a wooden macerator. Drink through a tube of macaroni or vermicelli.

To a tumbler two-thirds filled with lemonade, add a wine-glass of brandy, and fill to the brim with green lime-shrub. This is very pretty tipple.

Early Notices of Coffee.

Coffee is thus mentioned by Lord Bacon, in his Sylva Sylvarum : "They have in Turkey a drink called Coffee, made of a Berry of the same name, as Black as Soot, and of a Strong Sent, but not Aromatical ; which they take, beaten into Powder, in Water, as Hot as they can Drink it; and they take it, and sit at it in their Coffee Houses, which are like our Taverns. The Drink comforteth the Brain, and Heart, and helpeth Digestion."

And in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part I., sec. 2, occurs, "Turks in their coffee-houses, which much resemble our taverns." This was in 1621, long before coffee-houses were introduced into England.

In 1650, was opened at Oxford, the first coffee-house, by Jacob, a Jew, "at the Angel, in the parish of St. Peter in the East; and there it was, by some who delighted in novelty, drank."-A. Wood.

There was once an odd notion prevalent that coffee was unwholesome, and would bring its drinkers to an untimely end. Yet, Voltaire, Fontenelle, and Fourcroy, who were great coffee-drinkers, lived to a good old age. Laugh at Madame Sévigné, who foretold that coffee and Racine would be forgotten together!

Saloop.

What is now occasionally sold at stalls in the streets of London is a decoction of sassafras; but it was originally made from Salep, the roots of Orchis mascula, a common plant of our meadows, the tubers of which, being cleaned and peeled, are lightly browned in an oven. Salep was much recommended in the last century by Dr. Percival, who stated that salep had the property of concealing the taste of salt water, which property it was thought might be turned to account in long sea voyages. Salep has been considered as containing the largest portion of nutritious matter in the smallest space; and when boiled, it was much used in this

country before the introduction of tea and coffee, and their greatly reduced prices. Salep is now almost entirely disused in Great Britain; but we remember many saloop-stalls in our streets.

Olden Meal-Hours.

The hours of Meals are wonderfully changed. In the reign of Francis I. (about 1515) they used still to say

To rise at five, and dine at nine,

To sup at five, and bed at nine,
Will make a man live to ninety-nine.

The custom of dining at nine in the morning soon relaxed. Still, persons of quality long after dined at the latest at ten; and supper was at five or six in the evening. Charles V. used to dine at ten, sup at seven; and all the court were in bed by nine. They sounded the curfew, which warned them to put out the fires at six in the winter, and between eight and nine in the summer.

In England, a similar change took place. But in some degree it is a change rather of name, than of the meals themselves. Our ancestors would have called our luncheon dinner, and our dinner they would have called supper. It is a curious fact, that in some of the colleges in Oxford, where allowances are made by the founders for the meals of their scholars, a much more liberal sum is given for their supper than for their dinner, implying that the supper was the more substantial meal.

A Good Trencher-man.

This phrase for a hearty feeder remains, though the trencher is now disused, and almost forgotten. We find in the Anglo-Latin lexicon, 1440, Trenchowre, Scissorm." And in Shakspeare's Much Ado about Nothing, act i. sc. 1.:

He is a very valiant trencherman;

He hath an excellent stomach.

Fifty years since, both pewter plates, and trenchers or wooden plates, were in common use in villages and farmhouses; but the cheapness and abundance of earthenware have completely superseded them.

The taste of the day for artistic revivalism has, however, led to the introduction of wooden platters for bread, carved with appropriate decoration, and inscribed with "Waste not, want not," and other welltimed injunctions; and it is a good instance of the application of carving to utility, and the improvement of taste in articles of ordinary use.

Manners-bit.

This is the last bit or slice left on a plate, or dish; "Leave a bit for

manners," i.e., it is not good manners to eat all; for the nursery rhyme

tells us:

Of a little, take a little;
Manners so to do:
Of a little leave a little;
That is manners too.

Salmon.

Fluellen remarks to Gower, when on the field of Agincourt, "There is a river at Macedon; and there is also, moreover, a river at Monmouth,it is called Wye . . . . and there is salmons in both." (Henry V. act iv. sc. 7.) And, if you proceed from Monmouth, the birthplace of our warlike Henry V., to Gloucester, in thirty miles you will cross those famous rivers, the Wye and Severn, both abounding with salmon, and formerly to a degree even beyond satiety. In Counsel's History of Gloucester, p. 157, speaking of St. Margaret's Hospital, or "House of Lepers," in that city, he says:

It was formerly a standing condition in the indentures of apprenticeship at Gloucester, that the apprentice should not be obliged to eat salmon more than thrice a week; which was, undoubtedly, intended as a precaution against this grievous disorder (leprosy).

The apprentice no longer runs the risk of surfeit from being glutted with this delicacy, which its price and scarceness alike protect him from. In Kerr's General View of the Agriculture of Berwick, 1813, it is remarked, that, "formerly, when salmon sold at 2s. the fish stone (of nearly nineteen pounds), servants stipulated with their masters that they should not be compelled to make frequent meals of it;" but, (when Kerr wrote,) he says, it ranges from 12s. to 36s., and sometimes to guineas the stone, and this has been the cause of almost banishing this article from the inhabitants of the environs of the fishery in Tweede. Mr. George Dempster having, about that time, suggested the packing the fish in ice, had rendered its transport more advantageous, and consequently taken it out of the home-market.—Notes and Queries, abridged; 2nd S., No. 73.

At Killarney, on the lake bank, the freshly-caught salmon is cut into slices, and broiled over a fire of arbutus-wood, in the ashes of which are placed potatoes, not only for roasting, but that they may receive the fat and juices of the broiling fish. The Frazers of Lovat used to show their guests a voluntarily cooked salmon, at the Falls of Kilmorac. For this purpose a kettle was placed upon the flat rock on the south side of the fall, close by the edge of the water, and kept full and boiling. There the company are said to have waited till a salmon fell into the kettle and was boiled in their presence; "a mode of entertainment, I confess," says Mr. Hofland, "myself incapable of coveting, being too much of a sportsman, and too little of an epicure, to desire conquest so unworthy, and cooking so unnatural." There is annually given at Aberdeen, "a