page mottoed, ου παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἔστιν ἀρτῦσαι καλῶς! how apt is the proemium in its definition! "Sallets in general consist of certain esculent plants and herbs, improv'd by culture, industry, and art of the gardener; or, as others say, they are a composition of edile plants and roots of several kinds, to be eaten raw or green, blanched or candied, simple and per se, or intermingl'd with others, according to the season!" how laboriously does the body of the work enumerate the seventy-three materials which may be mingled with the oxelæum of vinegar, pepper, and oil, so preferable to the oinomelita of Aristoxenus! How feelingly does it dilate upon the qualities necessary for a skilful Acetarialegulist! "What care and circumspection should attend the choice and collection of sallet herbs has been partly shew'd. I can therefore by no means approve of that extravagant fancy of some, who tell us, that a fool is as fit to be the gatherer of a sallet as a wiser man; because, say they, one can hardly choose amiss, provided the plants be green, young, and tender, where-ever they meet with them. But sad experience shews how many fatal mistakes have been committed by those who took the deadly cicuta, hemlocks, aconits, &c. for garden persley and parsneps; the myrrhis sylvestris, or cow-weed, for charophilium (chervil); thapsia for fennel; the wild chondrilla for succory; dogs-mercury instead of spinach; papaver corniculatum luteum, and horn'd poppy, for eringo; ananthe aquatica for the palustral apium, and a world more, whose dire effects have been many times sudden death, and the cause of mortal accidents to those who have eaten of them unwittingly."—p. 760. To which fearful catalogue may be added, the nameless venomous weed of which Mr. Stafford gravely assures us, (Phil. Trans. III. xi. p. 794,) "I have seen a man who was so poyson'd with it, that the skin peel'd off his face, and yet he never touch'd it, onely looked on it as he pass'd by." Again, what enthusiasm for the science is displayed in the following passages! "We have said how necessary it is, that in the composure of a sallet every plant should come in to bear its part, without being overpower'd by some herb of a stronger taste, so as to endanger the native sapor and vertue of the rest, but fall into their places, like the notes in music, in which there should be nothing harsh or grating: and tho' admitting some discords (to distinguish and illustrate the rest) striking in the more sprightly, and sometimes gentler notes, reconcile all dissonancies, and melt them into an agreeable composition."—p.763. "From all which it appears, that a wise man is the proper composer of an excellent sallet, and how many transcendencies belong to an accomplish'd sallet-dresser, so as to emerge an exact critic indeed. He should be skill'd in the degrees, terms, and various species of tastes, according to the scheme set us down in the tables of the learned Dr. Grew,* to which I refer the curious."—p.764. Would that we had room to transcribe at length the nine golden rules for dressing, without the study of which no man can ever hope even to contemplate in his mind's eye the beau ideal of a sallet! I. Of the culling, cleansing, washing, and dressing.-II. Of the pallid olive greenness and the tastelessness of the oil. III. Of the distill'd, aromatiz'd, or impregnated vinegar.-IV. Of the detersive, penetrating, quickening bay-salt.-V. Of the sound, weighty, sifted, and winnowed mustard flour, tempered to the consistence of pap.-VI. Of the strewings of pepper, not bruised to too small a dust.-VII. Of the yolks of new-laid eggs, mingled and mashed.-VIII. Of the silver knife disdaining all metallic relish.-IX.And last, of the porcelain saladiere, neither too deep nor shallow. We cannot bring ourselves to omit any portion of the receipt for the liquor, in which this food for the Gods is finally to swim: "Your herbs being handsomely parcell'd, and spread on a clean napkin before you, are to be mingl'd together in one of the earthen glaz'd dishes. Then, for the Oxoleon; take of clear, and perfectly good oyl-olive, three parts; of sharpest vinegar (sweetest of all condiments †), limon or juice of orange, one part; and therein let steep some slices of horse-radish, with a little salt. Some in a separate vinegar, gently bruise a pod of Guinny-pepper, straining both the vinegars apart, to make use of either, or one alone, or of both, as they best like; then add as much Tewkesbury, or other dry mustard grated, as will lie upon an half-crown piece. Beat and mingle all these very well together; but pour not on the oyl and vinegar 'till immediately before the sallet is ready to be eaten; and then with the yolk of two new-laid eggs (boyl'd and prepar'd, as before is taught), squash and bruise them all into mash with a spoon; and lastly, pour it all upon the herbs, stirring and mingling them till they are well and throughly imbib'd; not forgetting the sprinkling of aromaticks, and such flowers as we have already mentioned, if you think fit, and garnishing the dish with the thin slices of horse-radish, red beet, berberries, &c. 'Note, That the liquids may be made more or less acid, as is most agreeable to your taste. "These rules and prescriptions duly observed, you have a sallet (for a table of six or eight persons) dress'd and accommodated, secundum artem."—p. 744. * Dr. Grew, Lecture vi. chap. 2, 3, read before the Royal Society. + For so some pronounce it. V. Athenæum, Deip. Lib. ii. cap. 26. dos quasi hovoua, perhaps for that it incites appetite, and causes hunger, which is the best sauce. And here we must pause; loth, indeed, not to dilate upon the remaining discourse on the wholesomeness of sallets; on the authorities to be found for their use among the Chaldæans, the Assyrians, and the Arabians; on the probability of their having been the diet of the Antediluvians, as they certainly were of the Bramins and Gymnosophists, and of the Platonists and Pythagoreans; of Xenocrates, Polemon, Zeno, Archinomus, Phraartes, and Chiron; and, finally, on the brutality and impiety of the aimatophagy of the Occidental Blood-eaters. All these tempting topics we are compelled to fly from, with many a lingering look; conscious that we have occupied a large, though by no means an undue, space, in affording our readers some gusto of a volume, upon which they may venture to make many a hearty meal. ART. III.-The Harmony of the Law and the Gospel, with regard to the Doctrine of a Future State. By Thomas William Lancaster, M. A. Vicar of Banbury, and formerly Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. Parker, Oxford; and Rivingtons, London, 1825. pp. 470. 66 "A propos des dieux," says Gibbon, in the second volume of his miscellaneous works, "I remark in Juvenal that indecision, with respect to the gods, which is so common among the ancients. This moment, nothing can be more pious and philosophical than his resignation and faith; the next, our own wisdom is sufficient for us, and prudence alone supplies the place of all the deities." The same indecision and the same inconsistency are still always observable in those who reject the light of revelation. Thus the infidel Bolingbroke, at one time, declares, "I receive with joy the expectations which the prospect of immortality raises in my mind, and the ancient and modern Epicureans provoke my indignation when they boast, as a mighty acquisition, their pretended certainty that the body and soul die together. If they had this certainty, could this discovery be so very comfortable? I should have no difficulty which to choose, if the option were proposed to me, to exist after death, or to die whole."* At another time, he speaks of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and punishments, as "invented by the ancient theists, philosophers, and legislators, to give an additional strength to the sanctions of the law of nature, and indebted for its reception to the predominant pride of man; since every one was flattered by a system, that raised him in imagination above corporeal nature, and made him hope to pass an immortality in the fellowship of the gods." He asserts, that "reason will neither affirm nor deny a future state," and that " it cannot decide for it on principles of natural theology;"† that "it was originally an hypothesis, and may therefore be a vulgar error, taken upon trust by the people, till it came to be disputed and denied by such as did examine;"† that "there is not any thing, philosophically speaking, which obliges us to conclude that we are compounded of material and immaterial substance;"§ that "it neither has been, nor can be proved, that the soul is a distinct substance united to the body;" that "when we are dead all these (intellectual) faculties die with us ;" that "it might as reasonably be said, we shall walk eternally, as think eternally;"'|| and that all the phenomena from our birth to our death seem repugnant to the immateriality and immortality of the soul; so that he is forced to conclude with Lucretius: Gigni pariter cum compore, et una Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem."¶ Nevertheless, out of sheer hatred to revelation, he urges it as a decisive argument against the divine original of the law of Moses, that he makes no express mention of future rewards and punishments, and uses no motive to induce the people to a strict observation of it, of a higher nature than promises of immediate good, and threatenings of immediate evil; whence he concludes, that "it is absurd, as well as improper, to ascribe these Mosaical laws to God. Whether Moses had learnt among the schools of Egypt this doctrine, (of another life, wherein the crimes committed in this life are to be punished,) cannot," he says, " be determined; but this may be advanced with assurance: If Moses knew that crimes, and therefore idolatry, one of the greatest, were to be punished in another life, he deceived the people in the covenant they made by his intervention with God. If he did not know it, I say it with horror, the consequence, according to the hypothesis oppose, must be, that God deceived both him and them. either case, a covenant or bargain was made, wherein the conditions of obedience and disobedience were not fully, nor by consequence fairly, stated; the Israelites had better things to hope, and worse to fear, than those that were expressed in it. And their whole history seems to show how much need they had of these additional motives to restrain them from polytheism and * Vol. v. p. 228. Ibid. P. 237. § Vol. iii. p. 363. + Ibid. p. 322. il Ibid. p. 516. et seq. Ibid. p. 352. ¶ Ibid. p. 557. In idolatry, and to answer the assumed purpose of divine provi dence."* is These objections, though they came with a very ill grace from one who affirmed that the law of nature, (which he every where extols as bearing sufficient proofs of its divine original,) employs only temporal sanctions, and such as affect nations collectively, and not men individually, are, it must be acknowledged, extremely plausible, and present us with an apparent difficulty; for natural religion itself, which teaches us the unchangeable goodness of the Deity, and the indispensable necessity of a future state of retribution to deter men from a vicious course of life, to support them in the practice of virtue, and to compensate for the unequal distribution of good and evil in this world, leads us, it may seem, to expect, that the knowledge of a truth which, in every age, equally necessary to individual happiness and the well-being of society, should in every age have been discovered to mankind with the fullest assurance of revelation. Cooler reasoners will discover at a glance the gross fallacy which this argument involves. To the infidel it seemed unanswerable. But whilst the deists were glorying in the impregnable position which their leader had chosen, there appeared a champion in the camp of Israel who boldly met him on his own ground, and maintained with equal confidence, and far superior powers, that the omission in the Mosaic law of the sanctions of a future state, afforded in itself a direct and decisive proof of its divine origin; for if the doctrine of a future state of retribution is so necessary to the well-being of civil society, that whatever religions or societies have no future state for their support, must be supported by an extraordinary Providence, the conclusion is inevitable, that the Mosaic dispensation, which confessedly wanted this support, must have been supported by extraordinary interpositions of divine power, and, consequently, must have had a divine original. Such is the position which Warburton undertook to maintain in his immortal work, "The Divine Legation of Moses;" where, in removing the objections that lay in his way, he was obliged to stretch the inquiry so high and wide, that men of feebler minds, who were unable to follow him, affected to acquire the praise of judgment and consistency, by condemning his love of paradox, his dogmatical boldness, and the strong but devious flight with which he swept through the boundless regions of science and learning:τρόπον αιγυπιῶν, διτ, ἐκπατίοις ἄλγεσι παίδων, ύπατοι λεχέων Vol. v. p. 195. |