Nations have their ages of splendour--viands have their epochs of celebrity and glory. This one seems to us fast falling into decay, in spite of some isolated efforts in order to make it reflourish. When Rockingham was named member of parliament, he ordered thirteen barrels of eels to be brought to London, for the banquet he gave on that occasion.[XXI-133] No one to our knowledge has since prepared so gigantic a _matelote_. Travellers formerly saw in the Ganges beautiful eels 300 feet long[XXI-134]--a magnificent species never seen in Europe. “The eel, so much despised by the Romans, is rather in favour in several countries; certain species are much esteemed, that named _Guiseau_, among others, deserves the preference it always obtains at Rouen.”--BOSC. PIKE. The pike was very little esteemed by ancient gastronomists, who viewed it only as an ignoble inhabitant of muddy water, and the implacable enemy of frogs.[XXI-135] It was a received opinion that this despotic ruler of ponds lived for several centuries, and it may be correct. Among the examples of longevity of this fish, the most remarkable is that of the pike of _kaisers’-lantern_, which was nineteen feet long, weighed 350 lbs., and had lived at least 235 years. It is reported that the Emperor Barbarossa himself threw it, on the 5th of October, 1262, into the pond where it was caught in 1497; and that this enormous pike wore a golden ring, which was made so that it would expand, and on which was engraved the date when the fish was spawned. Its skeleton was for a long time preserved at Mannheim.[XXI-136] The multiplication of pikes would be immense if the spawn and pickrel, in the first year of their existence, were not the prey of several other fishes; for it has been calculated that in a female pike of middling size 184,000 eggs were found. “In the north, and particularly in Siberia, the pike is preserved salted and smoked; the largest only are used, those weighing about two pounds. When they have been drawn, cleaned, and washed, they are cut in pieces, stratified with salt, in barrels. A brine is formed in which they are left for three days, then they are dried or smoked for one month. After this time they are put in another barrel, with fresh salt, wetted with vinegar.”--BOSC. CARP. The carp occupied a very honourable rank with the Greeks and Latins, but only as a fish of the second order.[XXI-137] At Athens, they picked out the bones and stuffed it with silphium, cheese, salt, and marjoram.[XXI-138] The Romans boiled it and mixed it with sows’ paps, fowls’ flesh, fig-peckers, or thrushes; and when the whole was made into a kind of pulp, they added raw eggs and oil; then they sprinkled it over with pepper and alisander; after which they poured wine, garum, and cooked wine over it; and when the culinary combination was completed in the stewpan, by the assistance of a slow fire, it was then thickened with flour.[XXI-139]