While discoursing of the little peccadilloes of the honest tradesmen of “this land of Christianity,” I never apprehended that it was possible to sophisticate fruit. But at the very moment I was about to consummate my bold, and I hope it will prove, patriotic undertaking, by affixing the important and consolatory, though little word, “FINIS,” a new discovery presented itself to my astonished optics! Can you believe me, John? I happened to pop in rather inopportunely, that is to say, a-la-mode Paul Pry, on a fruit-artist, who was preparing some stale plums for sale, and giving them all the bloom and fragrance of having been just plucked from the tree. This recondite feat of _fruitist_-ingenuity consists in anointing certain parts of the fruit with gum water, and then shaking a muslin bag containing finely powdered blue upon the prepared parts of the fruit, which are laid uppermost upon a board, to receive the precious unction.—From the honest tradesman whom I thus found patriotically engaged in furthering “the trading and commercial interests of his dear native land,” I also learned that some of the more skilful and enterprizing artists soak plums in water, when they have become shrivelled, in order to plump them out, and make them, as it is fashionably phrased, en-bon-point. What an age of intellect do we live in! Could our good old Druidical ancestors have supposed that their puny and degenerate offspring would be endowed with the extraordinary gift of being able to rejuvenize old worm-eaten nuts? Rare and sublime discovery! What, John, may we not next expect? Surely, we have reached the millenium of the march of intellect and the perfection of sophistication. But I must not keep the reader longer in suspense. The rejuvenization of Old Nuts! Just as I had finished writing the above article, an old and almost forgotten friend called on me, one who has long and scientifically been patriotically engaged, “in this age of intellect,” in rejuvenizing old, rotten, worm-eaten walnuts and almonds, of each last year’s growth, and giving their “externals” all the whiteness and beauty of the lily-white hand of a “fine lady,” and their “internals” all the plumpness and en-bon-point admired by his “most moral majesty,” our late “gracious and beloved sovereign,” in his “fair defects of nature.” By this scion of “the trading interests” I am informed that old nuts of all kinds are first soaked in water in order to plump them out, and then they are fumigated with sulphur for the purpose of rendering the shells white and clean. SECTION VII. _Confectionary, Pastry, and Perfumery._ The confectionary-artist is not behind his compeers in trade in the honourable vocation of sophistication. There are few articles which owe their paternity to his handy-work, that partake wholly of the ingredients to which they bear resemblance in name and appearance: all, almost all, here is the work of “the black art.”