“Upstairs there are extensive ranges of kitchens where burnt sacrifices are being perpetually offered up in the shape of mutton and beef; a dining-room and a smoke-room, dark-panelled and cosy, where a man may forget the world and be lost to it during a much coveted mid-day rest. Of other rooms on other floors no man knoweth, save that in rumours it is alleged there have been private parties over marrow-bones and puddings, a theory which is well borne out by echoes of peals of laughter, and the popping of champagne corks. Whatever the place may be above, however, it has no comparison with the glories that lie below the paving. The privileged few who are allowed to go into the wondrous cellars—redolent of sawdust, cobweb-coated, and covered with dust—wander amidst avenues of wine-bins with wonder and astonishment at the space occupied underground as compared with the upper regions. The entrance to the cellars is in the dingy office in the street of Fleet, which is devoted to the wholesale department, and here a record is kept of the rich old ports and generous clarets sleeping below, with the merry devils of laughter bottled up in quarts and magnums in overcoats of pink and foil. No man could remember them, be his experience as a cellar-man what it may. “The ‘Old C.C.’ is a fine record of the passing seasons. When genial spring has brought forward vegetation, the waiter’s cheerful intimation that ‘Asparagus is on, sir,’ recalls the fact forcibly to your notice. When, later, ‘’Am and peas’ can be secured, the vision of early summer is perfect, and is not even disturbed by boiled beans and bacon. In the hot, sultry days, cool salads are appropriate, and when these disappear there is a closing in of daylight and a general warning that the year is past its prime. Then does the ‘Cheese’ draw its blinds and light its gas, stoke up its fires, and announce its great puddings. Yet further ahead, when raw November days come upon us, the savoury smell of Irish stew—that fine winter lining for the hungry—pervades the place and so the season goes round. Of all the changes brought about by the rolling year, however, none is so popular as the advent of THE PUDDING, though it means frost, and damp, and cold winds. _The_ pudding (italics for ‘the,’ please,) has no rival in size or quality. Its glories have been sung in every country. The pudding ranges from fifty to sixty, seventy, and eighty pounds’ weight, and gossip has it that in the dim past the rare dish was constructed to proportions of a hundredweight. It is composed of a fine light crust in a huge basin, and there are entombed therein beefsteaks, kidneys, oysters, larks, mushrooms, and wondrous spices and gravies, the secret of which is known only to the compounder. The boiling process takes about SIXTEEN TO TWENTY HOURS,