just then have been disposed to appraise ourselves and our whole belongings at the value of a much bigger coin of the realm than a shabby florin. And this is just the sort of weather it continues to be. You cannot depend upon it for an hour. It is sunshine and blue above just for five minutes; it is all of a sudden gloomy and black as Erebus, and raining so multitudinously that you are fain to draw the skirts of your coat anyhow over your head and run for the nearest shelter. When we are to have better weather let the meteorologists, who ought to know, say. There is an old and frequent proverb, though rarely heard now-a-days, to the effect that "there goes reason to the roasting of eggs," the meaning of which, as we apprehend it, is that the smallest culinary operation is of importance, and should be gone about with judgment and care. If the proverb, however, in its actual words, as a mere popular saw, is very much forgotten, it is a good sign of our time that its spirit at least is in this our own day claiming no little attention, as the establishment of "cookery classes," and the praiseworthy attempts to disseminate culinary lore amongst the people, abundantly testify. It has been said that the man who makes two blades of grass to grow where only one blade grew before is a benefactor to his species, and equally so, would we venture to assert, is he a benefactor to the human race who shows how any single article of food, usually cooked and served in an unsatisfactory and tasteless fashion, may, with no extra expense and little extra trouble, be made palatable and savoury. The other day, landing from our boat, we went into a cottar's house close by the sea, in a neighbouring district, just as the gudewife was preparing the family dinner. A pot of new potatoes was boiling on the fire, and as she knew that it would take us still some time to get home, she very good-naturedly invited us to wait a little and take a share with herself and her husband of the dinner about to be served, a bit of hospitality as frankly accepted as it was kindly offered. Looking now and again into the boiling potato pot, and listening with inclined ear to the sound, actually musical in such a case, of its boil and bubbling, she was ready at the proper instant to snatch it off the fire, and, carrying it to a corner of the kitchen, she poured off the water, and immediately re-hung it over the fire again, shortening the chain by which it was suspended by a link or two, that the fire might not, now that it was waterless, have too much effect upon it. She then got some half-dozen fresh herrings, caught early that morning--herrings large, and beautiful, and silvery scaled as a salmon--and drying them nicely with a cloth, she placed them flat-wise side by side on the top of the potatoes in the pot, the lid of which she was careful to make fit tightly by means of a coarse kitchen towel, which served at once to cover the contents, and