Let us follow the accomplished chancellor farther in his physiological studies, and refer to the thirteenth Meditation, which treats of "gastronomic tests." In a previous chapter a famous bill of fare of the renowned Rocher de Cancale has been presented, which it may be well to compare with what approaches nearest to a menu or series of menus in the "Physiology." It will then be for the reader to decide whether he would rather have assisted at the feast of the Rocher alluded to, or at that prescribed by Savarin for an income of thirty thousand francs in the early part of the century. In both instances the list of accompanying wines is wanting, and therefore the menus are necessarily incomplete as a dinner chronicle of the times. Happily, the long and heavy dinners of former days have given place to repasts of a far more simple nature, as the heavy wines of Oporto and the South and the highly saccharine products of the vine have been replaced by lighter and more wholesome kinds. It is possible now to dine well and generously and escape a headache or an indigestion the following morning. By "gastronomic tests," which the author claims as a personal discovery that will honour the nineteenth century, he understands dishes of acknowledged flavour, of an excellence so undoubted that the mere sight of them ought to move, in a well-organised man, every faculty of taste; so that all those whose faces under such circumstances neither flash with desire nor beam with ecstasy may justly be noted as unworthy of the honours of the banquet and its attending pleasures. A test destined for a man of limited means, he explains, would have little reference to a head clerk, and would scarcely be perceived when a select few dine together at a capitalist's or a diplomatist's. Should such dishes as a truffled turkey seem out of keeping for an income of fifteen thousand francs, and the list of the "third series" appear too elaborate for an income of double that sum, due consideration should be taken of the value of the franc at the period to which the author refers. It is also to be presumed that such a bill of fare was not often served by any one person, and was therefore more highly prized and more easily digested. Gastronomic Tests. First Series. For a Presumed Income of 5000 Francs a Year (Mediocrity). A large fillet of veal, well larded with bacon, done in its own gravy. A country-fed turkey stuffed with Lyons chestnuts. Fattened pigeons larded and cooked to a turn. Eggs _dressed à la neige_. A dish of Sauerkraut bristling with sausages and crowned with Strassburg bacon. _Remarks._--"Bless me! that looks all right! Come on! let us do honour to it!" Second Series. For a Presumed Income of 15,000 Francs (Comfort). A fillet of beef underdone in the middle, larded and done in its own gravy.