“I was very sorry to hear you had left town--and so unexpectedly too. I obtained your address from Mivart’s, and hasten to avail myself of it. Pray come to town immediately, I have received some chevreuil as a present, and long for your opinion; it is too nice to keep: for all things nice were made but to grow bad when nicest; as Moore, I believe, says of flowers, substituting sweet and fleetest, for bad and nicest; so, you see, you must come without loss of time. “But you, my friend--how can you possibly have been spending your time? I was kept awake all last night, by thinking what you could have for dinner. Fish is out of the question in the country; chickens die of the pip every where but in London; game is out of season; it is impossible to send to Gibblet’s for meat; it is equally impossible to get it any where else; and as for the only two natural productions of the country, vegetables and eggs, I need no extraordinary penetration, to be certain, that your cook cannot transmute the latter into an omelette aux huitres, on the former into legumes a la creme. “Thus, you see, by a series of undeniable demonstrations, you must absolutely be in a state of starvation. At this thought, the tears rush into my eyes: for heaven’s sake, for my sake, for your own sake, but above all, for the sake of the chevreuil, hasten to London. I figure you to myself in the last stage of atrophy--airy as a trifle, thin as the ghost of a greyhound. “I need say no more on the subject. I may rely on your own discretion, to procure me the immediate pleasure of your company. Indeed, were I to dwell longer on your melancholy situation, my feelings would overcome me--Mais, revenons a nos moutons--(a most pertinent phrase, by the by--oh! the French excel us in every thing, from the paramount science of cookery, to the little art of conversation.) “You must tell me your candid, your unbiased, your deliberate opinion of chevreuil. For my part, I should not wonder at the mythology of the northern heathen nations, which places hunting among the chief enjoyments of their heaven, were chevreuil the object of their chace; but nihil est omni parte beatum, it wants fat, my dear Pelham, it wants fat: nor do I see how to remedy this defect; for were we by art to supply the fat, we should deprive ourselves of the flavour bestowed by nature; and this, my dear Pelham, was always my great argument for liberty. Cooped, chained, and confined in cities, and slavery, all things lose the fresh and generous tastes, which it is the peculiar blessing of freedom and the country to afford. “Tell me, my friend, what has been the late subject of your reflections? My thoughts have dwelt much, and seriously, on the ‘terra incognita,’ the undiscovered tracts in the pays culinaire, which the profoundest investigators have left untouched and unexplored in veal. But more of this hereafter;--the lightness of a letter, is ill suited to the depths of philosophical research.