This volume is valuable chiefly for the great variety of its menus--the joint production of the author and the presiding genius of the Rocher de Cancale when Parisian cookery had attained its greatest distinction. The menus, each of which is commented upon at length, are remarkable for their elaborateness and diversity, and illustrate the great inventive resources of the period. Any one of those that are designed for sixty covers would seem sufficient, with judicious selection and by the substitution of a few dishes, according to the season, to serve throughout the year. The last division of the volume, relating to table usages, is covered in the "Almanach," as is also some of the matter of the first division. It is in the "Manuel" that we find the gifted author in his most serious mood and most impressed with his responsibilities. To guide the capricious stomachs of a great capital in the right way, to instruct unerringly in the _grand art du savoir vivre_, to give a new impetus to a refinement that the Jacobins and the Directory had well nigh relegated to oblivion, was a task that might not be entered upon lightly or undertaken without a grave sense of its importance. The bills of fare are veritable morsels to turn over on the tongue. For if, as La Fontaine avers, _le changement de mets réjouit l'homme_--how important that man's daily change be an appetising one! And yet one may well rejoice that he lives in an age when a good dinner may be composed of a simple soup, a perfectly cooked fish, an entrée, a bird, and a salad, with a good wine served at its proper temperature. Cookery has changed with time, and the "manual" of a host of to-day differs as much as does his costume from that of a century ago. This is not saying that on a stimulating winter's day it were not worth a walk of many a league to dine where the menu had been superintended by the author of the "Manuel" and executed by the Rocher--if that were possible at present. Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de la Reynière was born in Paris, November 20, 1758. His early life was an adventurous one, and after first identifying himself with belles-lettres he studied and practised law, besides engaging in various artistic, literary, and mercantile pursuits. In his thirty-ninth year he became enamoured of an actress--Mlle. Mézeray--to which circumstance the world is largely indebted for the "Almanach" and the "Manuel des Amphitryons." On declaring his passion with all the fervour of a highly impressionable nature, only to meet with a repulse, he determined to look to gastronomy for consolation, a resolve he at once expressed in poetic form under the title "My Abnegation," the poem being addressed to "A Celebrated Actress" and published in a dramatic journal of which he was the editor. A stanza may be cited: "De vrais amis, un doux asile, Des dîners fins et délicats: Voilà pour mon âme tranquille, Qui vaut mieux que des _hélas_!"