Among the changes introduced here, within these few years, I had heard much of the improvements in the culinary art, or rather in the manner of serving up its productions; but, on my first arrival in Paris, I was so constantly engaged in a succession of dinner-parties, that some time elapsed before I could avail myself of an opportunity of dining at the house of any of the fashionable RESTAURATEURS. This is a title of no very ancient date in Paris. _Traiteurs_ have long existed here: independently of furnishing repasts at home, these _traiteurs_, like Birch in Cornhill, or any other famous London cook, sent out dinners and suppers. But, in 1765, one BOULANGER conceived the idea of _restoring_ the exhausted animal functions of the debilitated Parisians by rich soups of various denominations. Not being a _traiteur_, it appears that he was not authorized to serve ragouts; he therefore, in addition to his _restorative_ soups, set before his customers new-laid eggs and boiled fowl with strong gravy sauce: those articles were served up without a cloth, on little marble tables. Over his door he placed the following inscription, borrowed from Scripture: "_Venite ad me omnes qui stomacho laboratis, et ego restaurabo vos._" Such was the origin of the word and profession of _restaurateur_. Other cooks, in imitation of BOULANGER, set up as _restorers_, on a similar plan, in all the places of public entertainment where such establishments were admissible. Novelty, fashion, and, above all, dearness, brought them into vogue. Many a person who would have been ashamed to be seen going into a _traiteur's_, made no hesitation of entering a _restaurateur's_, where he paid nearly double the price for a dinner of the same description. However, as, in all trades, it is the great number of customers that enrich the trader, rather than the select few, the _restaurateurs_, in order to make their business answer, were soon under the necessity of constituting themselves _traiteurs_; so that, in lieu of one title, they now possess two; and this is the grand result of the primitive establishment.