Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/140

 136 famous "forty centuries;" and the reverse of the medal may be seen in Talleyrand's description of England, as a land where there were twenty-four religions and only one sauce. Twenty-four religions would make but a poor showing in these days, when even a serious novel can beget a new one; but sauces are not so lightly called into being. Those "slibber sops" which brought "queesiness to the stomach and disquiet to the mind" of John Lyly were hard to rout from the field; and they were still holding their own when Brillat-Savarin, the most serene and kindly of epicures, first visited Great Britain. With Savarin, eating was more than a mere vulgar pleasure; it was a solemn and yet exquisite duty which man owed to himself, and to a generous nature that had yielded him up her bounties for this purpose. Mr. Birrell says that Burke's letters on carrots "tremble with emotion," and there is a like earnestness about all of Savarin's recipes; a pathetic anxiety lest some ingredient should be omitted or ill-used. For fish he entertains a profound respect; for game, a