English Meals.—Clumsy Method of Butchery.—Lord Somerville.—Cruel Manner of killing certain Animals.—Luxuries of the Table.—Liquors. The English do not eat beef-steaks for breakfast, as lying travellers have told us, nor can I find that it has ever been the custom. The breakfast-table is a cheerful sight in this country: porcelain of their own manufactory, which excels the Chinese in elegance of form and ornament, is ranged on a Japan waiter, also of the country fabric; for here they imitate every thing. The mistress sits at the head of the board, and opposite to her the boiling water smokes and sings in an urn of Etruscan shape. The coffee is contained 165in a smaller vase of the same shape, or in a larger kind of tea-pot, wherein the grain is suspended in a bag; but nothing is so detestable as an Englishman’s coffee. The washing of our after-dinner cups would make a mixture as good; the infusion is just strong enough to make the water brown and bitter. This is not occasioned by ?conomy, though coffee is enormously dear, for the people are extravagant in the expences of the table: they know no better; and if you tell them how it ought to be made, they reply, that it must be very disagreeable, and even that if they could drink it so strong, it would prevent them from sleeping. There is besides an act of parliament to prevent the English from drinking good coffee: they are not permitted to roast it themselves, and of course all the fresh and finer flavour evaporates in the warehouse. They make amends however by the excellence of their tea, which is still very cheap, though the ministry, in violation 166of an explicit bargain, increased the tax upon it four fold, during the last war. This is made in a vessel of silver, or of a fine black porcelain: they do not use boiled milk with it, but cream in its fresh state, which renders it a very delightful beverage. They eat their bitter bread in various ways, either in thin slices, or toasted, or in small hot loaves, always with butter, which is the best thing in the country.
The dinner hour is usually five: the labouring part of the community dine at one, the highest ranks at six, seven, or even eight. The quantity of meat which they consume is astonishing! I verily believe that what is drest for one dinner here, would supply the same number of persons in Spain for a week, even if no fast-days intervened. Every where you find both meat and vegetables in the same crude and insipid state. The potatoe appears at table all the year round: indeed the poor subsist so generally upon this 167root, that it seems surprising how they could have lived before it was introduced from America. Beer is the common drink. They take less wine than we do at dinner, and more after it; but the custom of sitting for hours over the bottle, which was so prevalent of late years, has been gradually laid aside, as much from the gradual progress of the taxes as of good sense. Tea is served between seven and eight, in the same manner as at breakfast, except that we do not assemble round the table. Supper is rather a ceremony than a meal; but the hour afterwards, over our wine and water, or spirits, is the pleasantest in the day.
The old refinements of epicurean cruelty are no longer heard of, yet the lower classes are cruel from mere insensibility, and the higher ones, for want of thought, make no effort to amend them. The butchers and drovers in particular are a savage race. The sheep which I have met on their way to the slaughter-house, have 168frequently their faces smeared with their own blood, and accidents from over-driven oxen are very common. Cattle are slaughtered with the clumsiest barbarity: the butcher hammers away at the forehead of the beast; blow after blow raises a swelling which renders the following blows ineffectual, and th............