When the weary pilgrim reaches the beloved shores of England after a long absence, what first does he remark--after the incivility of the custom-house officers--but the great tankard of stout and the noble round of cold beef in the coffee-room of the hotel? He does not cry “Io Bacche! Evöe Bacche!” because beef is not Bacchus. He does not fall down and kiss his native soil, because the hotel carpet is somewhat dusty, and the action would be, besides, egregious; but he looks at the beef, and his eyes filling with tears, a corresponding humidity takes place in his mouth; he kisses the beef; he is so fond of it that he could eat it all up; and he does ordinarily devour so much of it to his breakfast, that the thoughtful waiter gazes at him, and murmurs to his napkin, “This man is either a cannibal or a pilgrim grey who has not seen Albion for many years.” By beef I mean, emphatically, the legitimate, unsophisticated article. Give me my beef, hot or cold, roast, boiled, or broiled; but away with your beef-kickshaws, your beef-stews, your beef-haricoes, your corned beef, your hung beef, and your spiced beef! I don’t think there is anything so contemptible, fraudulent, adulterine in the whole world (of cookery) as a beef sausage. I have heard that it is a favourite dish with pickpockets at their raffle-suppers. I believe it. There was a boy at school with me in the byegone--a day-boy--who used to bring a clammy brownish powder, in a sandwich-box, with him for lunch. He called it powdered beef; and he ate this mahogany, sawdust-looking mixture between slices of stale bread and butter. He was an ill-conditioned boy who had begun the world in the face-grinding sense much too early. He lent halfpence at usury, and dealt in sock (which was our slang for surreptitious sweet-stuff); and I remember with what savage pleasure I fell upon and beat him in the course of a commercial transaction involving a four-bladed penknife he had sold me, and which wouldn’t cut--no, not even slate-pencil. But the penknife was nothing more than a pretext: I beat him for his beef. He had the ring-worm, and it was bruited about afterwards that he was of Jewish parentage. I believe, when he began life, he turned out but badly.