I am reminded, however, that the subject of beef, as a British institution, has already been treated at some length in this journal.[A] I have merely ventured a few remarks on the bovine topic generally, to preface the experiences I have to record of some recent travels in search of beef I have made in the capital of France. One might employ oneself better, perhaps, than in transcribing the results of a week’s hankering after the flesh-pots of Egypt; and surely the journey in search of bread is long and wearisome enough that we might take beef as it comes, and thankfully. But, as I have said, beef is my mission. I am a collector of bovine experiences, as some men collect editions of Virgil, and some Raffaelle’s virgins, and some broadsides, and some butterflies. And I know that there are moralities to be found in beef as well as in the starry heavens and the vestiges of creation. [A] See Volume x. page 113. Let me first sum up all the knowledge I have acquired on the subject, by stating my firm conviction that there is no beef in Paris,--I mean, no beef fit to be eaten by a philobosopher. Some say that the French cut their meat the wrong way; that they don’t hang it properly; that they don’t hang it enough; that they beat it; that they overcook it. But I have tasted infinite varieties of French beef; of the first, second, and third categories. I have had it burnt to a cinder, and I have had it very nearly raw. I have eaten it in private English families resident in Paris, and dressed by English cooks. It is a delusion: there is no beef in Lutetia. The first beef I tried in my last campaign was the evening I dined at His Lorship’s. Don’t be alarmed, my democratic friend. I am not upon Lord Cowley’s visiting list, nor are any coronetted cards ever left at my door on the sixth storey. I did not receive a card from the British Embassy on the occasion of the last ball at the Hôtel de Ville; and I am ashamed to confess that, so anxious was I to partake of the hospitality of the Prefect of the Seine (the toilettes and the iced punch are perfect at his balls), that I was mean enough to foreswear temporarily my nationality and to avail myself of the card of Colonel Waterton Privilege of Harshellopolis, Mass.:--said colonel being at that time, and in all probability exceedingly sick, in his stateroom of the United States steamer Forked Lightning, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. But, by His Lorship’s I mean an Anglo-French restaurant--named after a defunct English city eating-house--situate near the Place de la Concorde, and where I heard that real English roast beef was to be obtained at all hours in first-rate condition.