In all countries there are records of the excessive fondness of great men for oysters. Cervantes was an oyster-lover, and he satirised the oyster-dealers of Spain. Louis XI., careful lest scholarship should become deficient in France, feasted the learned doctors of the Sorbonne, once a year, on oysters; and another Louis invested his cook with an order of nobility as a reward for his oyster-cookery. Napoleon, also, was an oyster-lover; so was Rousseau; and Marshall Turgot used to eat a hundred or two, just to whet his appetite for breakfast. Invitations to a dish of oysters were common in the literary and artistic circles of Paris at the latter end of last century. The Encyclopedists were particularly fond of oysters. Helvetius, Diderot, the Abbé Raynal, Voltaire, and others, were confirmed oyster-men. Before the Revolution, the violent politicians were in the habit of constantly frequenting the Parisian oyster-shops; and Danton, Robespierre, and others, were fond of the oyster in their days of innocence. The great Napoleon, on the eve of his battles, used to partake of the bivalve; and Cambaceres was famous for his shell-fish banquets. Even at this day the consumption of oysters in Paris is enormous. According to recent statistics the quantity eaten there is one million per day! Among our British celebrities, Alexander Pope was an oyster-eater of taste, and so was Dean Swift, who was fond of lobsters as well. Thomson, of _The Seasons_, who knew all good things, knew how good a thing an oyster was. The learned Dr. Richard Bentley could never pass an oyster-shop without having a few; and there have been hundreds of subsequent Englishmen who, without coming up to Bentley in other respects, have resembled him in this. The Scottish philosophers, too, of the last century—Hume, Dugald Stewart, Cullen, etc.—used frequently to indulge in the “whiskered pandores” of their day and generation. “Oyster-ploys,” as they were called, were frequently held in the quaint and dingy taverns of the Old Town of Edinburgh. These Edinburgh oyster-taverns of the olden time were usually situated underground, in the cellar-floor; and, even in the course of the long winter evenings, the carriages of the quality folks would be found rattling up, and setting down fashionable ladies, to partake of oysters and porter, plenteously but rudely served. What oysters have been to the intellect of Edinburgh in later times, who needs to be told that has heard of Christopher North and read the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_? The Americans become still more social over their oysters than we do, and their extensive seabord affords them a very large supply, although I regret to learn that, in consequence of overfishing and of carrying away the fish at improper seasons, the oyster-banks of that great country are in danger of becoming exhausted. In City Island the whole population participates in the oyster-trade, and there is an oyster-bed in Long Island Sound which is 115 miles long.