ON

CONFECTIONERY.

NE cannot open this book* without fancying that one scents all the good things that we see mentioned in it, the cakes, candies, creams, ices, preserved fruit,— the raspberry tarts, and the sirups of violet. Mr. Gunter, whom "the gods have made poetical," and who quotes Greek, Latin, and Italian for his purpose, justly claims for his art something of a superior elegance to that of all others connected. with the table. We except the Fruiterer; but his is not more of an in-door than an out-of-door art. The Fruiterer belongs to all times of the day, and all places except the high street; whereas pastry and confectionery must be eaten housed. There is a sort of sophistication connected with them which does not do for pure nature. The little boy is the only person that can eat his bunn in the face of heaven and not be ashamed. And we suspect, that with all the helps of Mr. Gunter, no masticator of jelly cakes, or meringues, eats his felicity with half the satisfaction that he did his bunn when he was a little boy.

The superiority of confectionery and pastry over other cookery consists in its association with fruits and grain. A cookery-book reminds one of the

* The Confectioner's Oracle, containing Receipts for Desserts, &c., with others for Pastry-Cooks, and an Elucidation of the Principles of Good Cheer. Being a Companion to Dr. Kitchener's Cook's Oracle.

By W. Gunter.

shambles. The Confectioner talks to us of sugars, and oranges, and violets. He lives in quite another world. He is of the garden and the dairy. Eve, who "tempered dulcet creams," was the mother of his pretty girls in the pastry shops. Cookery did not begin till after the fall. We confess, if our bad habits would let us, we would never eat joint more, but stick to this paradisiacal eating, and have blood made up of raspberries and the rose. It is not moral weakness that prompts us to the wish, any more than bodily weakness would follow it. To get out of the necessity of beef eating, would be to get out of the necessity of excitement and clouded energy. The weakest stomachs are those which assimilate best with flesh already made. To take to a sudden course of living upon fruits and farina might endanger it; but he that had never lived on anything else would probably beat us all. The late General Elliott, whose picture, by Sir Joshua, may be seen in Pall Mall, stout, military, with a nose as energetic as his cocked hat, lived entirely on fruit and vegetables.

But to our author. Mr. Gunter seems to be two, if not "three gentlemen at once," in his book. There is, first, the gay, bantering, scholarly Gunter, superior to his trade, and tossing his quotations about him, from the Greek and Latin; there is the professional Gunter, important in his undertaking, and piquing himself on the patronage of his lords and ladies; and, finally, there is the Gunter of the frontispiece, sitting beside a table with a fowl on it, and looking as melancholy as the first is gay. He seems to have

no appetite to his dish, but rather to be deploring the bad digestion of some previous one, one of his hands being in his waistcoat, and his face looking incredulous of the pleasures of this world. This Gunter may be the second, but he ought not to have been so candid in his lemon peel. Great men cannot always afford to be seen in their simplicity. He should have given us a head of himself in its smartest condition, like Mr. Ude or Mr. Farley, and not have led the reader to suppose that a Confectioner can look

mortal.

To the Gunter in his professional state we have nothing to object. We take it for granted that his cakes and jellies are made after the most exquisite fashion, otherwise the facetious Gunter could not have introduced "Earl Powis" making a speech in his favor. In the Advice to Confectioners, we have a sketch of the history of the science, more smart than satisfactory; and in the appendix we are presented, in a most unexpected and disinterested manner, with remarks on digestion, and earnest advice to take care of one's health, by air, temperance, and exercise. Such is the march of intellect, like those of the white ants, over one's very table, and so thoughtful does an eater of pastry become in spite of the vivacity of his set-to. This reminds us that Mr. Gunter may say what he pleases against cooks, as distinguished from pastry-cooks, but of all the substances taken into the daring stomachs of men, the physicians tell us (and we believe them) that there is none so difficult to conquer, and so provocative of horror in the struggle, as the compound of

flour and fried butter, known to the unsuspecting under the innocent name of pie-crust. The boy goes on bearing it for a long time, but, as he grows older, "shades of the prison house" begin to close in upon him, as Mr. Wordsworth says, - that is to say, of pie-crust; for it is clear, by the speculative melancholy of that poet, that he has been a large eater of it in his time. "The child," he says, is father to the man,”. that is, begets all the habits of the grown person; and pie-crust, he may depend upon it, is the origin of much melancholy blank verse and theological dilemma.* We except this from the innocencies of our pastry, unless our readers are fox-hunters, or run about as they did in the days when pie was bliss. In that case they may eat anything.

But we have another objection to make to the elegant Gunter, which is, that in endeavoring to exalt his art into new regions of the sweet, he becomes profane, and talks of love and the ladies! Now, we must never have two such things as love and the love of eating brought together. If eating, in its most innocent shape (as no doubt may be the case), is found in connection with love, care must be taken to distinguish one love from the other, and not confound their metaphors and their sympathies. Here is Dr.

* Holmes's Autocrat, you may remember, once took more of his landlady's pie than was good for him, and had an indigestion in consequence. "While I was suffering from it," he says, "I wrote some sadly desponding poems and a theological essay, which took a very melancholy view of creation. When I got better, I labelled them all 'Pie-Crust,' and laid them by as scarecrows and solemn warnings. I have a number of books on my shelves that I should like to label with some such title; but as they have great names on their title-pages, -Doctors of Divinity some of them, it wou dn't do." - ED.

Kitchener, in the introduction, represented as talking of the "epicurism of the sex," and recommending Mr. Gunter to give "a sort of electrical and thrilling impulsion" to all the ladies! We hope they will be on their guard the next time they see him. He is an accomplished but dangerous man. In the same place we are told that the eating of a delicate confection, compared with that of a ragout, is like the finer feeling of a "second love" compared with "the undistinguishing ardor of a first attachment ;" and in the appendix, an appetite, which requires exciting, is likened to "the lukewarm heart of a husband" made warmer by the "caresses of his wife." We beg the lady patronesses of Mr. Gunter to put a stop to these profane images. There is an elegance in the pleasures of confectionery, which does not extend to every sort of eating; but the grosser part of both sexes have already a notion that eating and loving are entertainments of the same family; and if those who understand the matter do not interfere, we shall have horrid women or, rather, no women laying down the laws of beef and affection over the dinner table, and making out that people have no mind to anything but body. Miserable creatures! Nobody can have a mind to theirs. They never bring together the two ideas of love and woman. They are women and lobster sauce, and fit only to be loved by cannibals. They are They are "fond" of fish! An ogre

would be "fond" of them.

Ladies and sweetmeats may undoubtedly be brought together, and there are occasions when love and sweet

meats may be so. There is a pretty instance of it in