Do I blame or criticise this ingenious manufacture? Far from it. The pounded and compounded chops and steaks are better than original ones—are easy of digestion—require little or no mastication—are savoury to the taste, and warm to the stomach—and, what is of some consequence, they are economical, and always ready for dressing at any hour of the day or night. The only part of the compound to which I object, is the _bony-part_. These bones remain in the kitchen, like heir-looms, serving from generation to generation, as far as I know, and if the cook takes the trouble to wash them daily, with the spoons’ and forks, my objection vanishes at once. The above discovery explained an enigma which often puzzled me when travelling on the Continent—namely, the impossibility of getting cold meat at a hotel—even a few hours after the most splendid table-d’hôte. I can have no reason—or at all events no right, to question the taste of our continental neighbours in the preparation of their food. To German cookery, German spas, German baths, and German waggons, I owe the loss of fifteen pounds in weight, and that in a late tour of two months. But then the lost flesh was London fed—and I gained in strength far more in proportion than I lost in weight. This may prove a valuable hint to the race of aldermen, and many others besides. 23. _Gallic and German Patriotism compared._—The temperature of a Frenchman’s patriotism seldom reaches the boiling, or even the fever point, unless he is, in act or imagination, the aggressor or agitator. It requires the fuel of pride, ambition, glory, revolution, or conquest, present or prospective, to keep up the steam of national enthusiasm among our Gallic neighbours. Not so beyond the Rhine. A German’s patriotism rises in proportion as “FADERLAND” is borne down by misfortunes, or trode upon by the foot of the haughty foreigner. The flame of devotion to country never burns with greater intensity in a German’s breast, than when it is apparently extinguished by the pressure of the victorious enemy. Both these propositions are proved by history. Every one knows the sacrifices which the people of France made in the late war, while Napoleon was trampling on the liberties of Europe. Yet, when the tide of his glory ebbed, and the energies of Germany and other countries carried forward the contest into the heart of France—the French nation sunk into apathy, stupor, or indifference. So, on a recent occasion, when the thunder of British cannon demolished the ramparts of a Syrian despot—a vice-regal slave-driver—and reverberated from the pyramids to Montmartre, the flame of patriotism glowed in every Frenchman’s breast, from the Mediterranean to the Moselle—and already the MARSELLAISE hymn depicted the EAGLES, as pluming their wings and wafting their flight over the Alps and the Rhine—over the Tyber and the Thames! For, although the word “patriotism” means, in all other languages, the love of natal soil,