I imagine, however, that of all the latter-day master-cooks, Alexis Soyer is most remembered. His "Gastronomic Regenerator," a large and handsome octavo volume of between 700 and 800 pages, published in 1846, lies before me. It has portraits of the compiler and his wife, and many other illustrations, and is dedicated to a Royal Duke. It was produced under the most influential patronage and pressure, for Soyer was overwhelmed with engagements, and had scruples against appearance in print. He tells us that in some library, to which he gained access, he once found among the works of Shakespeare and other _chefs_ in a different department, a volume with the words "Nineteenth Edition" upon it, and when he opened it, he saw to his great horror "A receipt for Ox-tail Soup!" Why this revelation exercised such a terrifying effect he proceeds to explain. It was the incongruity of a cookery book in the temple of the Muses. But nevertheless, such is the frailty of our nature, that he gradually, on regaining his composure, and at such leisure intervals as he could command, prepared the "Gastronomic Regenerator," in which he eschewed all superfluous ornaments of diction, and studied a simplicity of style germane to the subject; perchance he had looked into Kitchener's Preface. He lets us know that he had made collections of the same kind at an earlier period of his career, but had destroyed them, partly owing to his arduous duties at the Reform Club, and partly to the depressing influence of the nineteenth edition of somebody else's cookery book--probably, by the way, Ude's. The present work occupied some ten months, and was prepared amid the most stupendous interruptions from fair visitors to the Club (15,000), dinners for the members and their friends (25,000), dinner parties of importance (38), and the meals for the staff (60). He gives a total of 70,000 dishes; but it is not entirely clear whether these refer to the 38 dinner parties of importance, or to the 25,000 of inferior note, or to both. The feeling of dismay at the nineteenth edition of somebody must have been sincere, for he winds up his preface with an adjuration to his readers (whom, in the "Directions for Carving," he does not style Gentle, or Learned, or Worshipful, but HONOURABLE) not to place his labours on the same shelf with "Paradise Lost." Soyer had also perhaps certain misgivings touching too close an approximation to other _chefs_ besides Milton and Shakespeare, for he refers to the "profound ideas" of Locke, to which he was introduced, to his vast discomfort, "in a most superb library in the midst of a splendid baronial hall." But the library of the Reform Club probably contained all this heterogeneous learning. Does the "Gastronomic Regenerator," out of respect to the fastidious sentiments of its author, occupy a separate apartment in that institution with a separate curator?