From this feast every one will be dismissed to the mansion assigned him, where he will have such a share of felicity as is proportionate to his merit, but vastly exceeding comprehension or computation, since the very meanest in Paradise will have 80,000 servants, 72 wives of the girls of Paradise, beside the wives he had in this world, and a tent erected for him of pearls, jacinths, and emeralds of a very large extent. There he will be waited on by 300 attendants while he eats, and shall be served in dishes of gold, whereof 300 shall be set before him at once, containing each a different kind of food, the last morsel of which will be as grateful as the first, and will also be supplied with as many sorts of liquors in vessels of the same metal; and, to complete the entertainment, there will be no want of wine, which, though forbidden in this life, will yet be freely allowed in the next without danger, since the wine of Paradise will never inebriate though you drink it for ever.

But all these glories, as Sale observes, will be eclipsed by the ravishing girls of Paradise, called Houris, from their large black eyes, Hur al oyun, the enjoyment of whose company will be a principal felicity of the faithful. These are not created of clay as mortal women are, but of pure musk, and their bodies are odoriferous as frankincense, being free from all defects and inconveniences incident to the sex, of the strictest modesty, and secluded from public view in pavilions of hollow pearls, so large that one of them will measure sixty miles long and as many broad.

Thus the bold and dazzling imagination of the East has ever delighted to draw analogies and correspondences between the spiritual and physical economies of nature, which Milton seems to have dreamed of in his description of Paradise, where he says, "For earth hath this variety from heaven Of pleasure situate in hill and dale."

Perhaps, however, there is more analogy than we suppose, as the soundest and gravest commentators on Scripture, like Grotius, have adopted this idea, which has been carried to so great a length by the Swedenborgians.

Grotius, whom of all men we love

best to imitate, regarding him as the greatest light that ever yet scattered the clouds of ignorance and discord that still hover around us, makes the tree of knowledge in the earthly Paradise no less dainty and delectable than the immortal palms of Mahomet's elysium. In fact, he supposes the fruit was excessively nice, and that Eve, with due reverence be it spoken, was a little epicure, or at least a little of an epicure. For thus she speaks in the Adamus Exul, which is the parent of Paradise Lost:

store

O sweet, sweet apple how thy glittering [scent Dazzles my eyes! its dream-like, exquisite Fills all my sense! would I could lay aside All fear, that trembling folly, and enjoy The elysium of the fruit, and learn at once Its mystery of bliss.

It is necessary to observe that in the East, cookery very early divided itself into two branches, the science andthe art; one was the learned, occult, esoteric, initiated cookery of the physcians and philosophers, now called dietetics; the other was that vulgar but exceedingly edifying art, which, though comparatively undiscriminating, is far more satisfactory, and has consequently almost superseded the other in popular esteem.

An old writer of the 5th century, no less a man than St. Ambrose, was highly indignant with these medical dietetics, which he evidently considers the worst department of cookery. “The precepts of physic," says he, are contrary to divine living, for they call men from fasting, suffer them not to watch, seduce them from opportunities of meditation. They who give themselves up to physicians deny themselves to themselves." And St. Bernard on the Canticles, thus asserts: Hippocrates and Socrates teach how to save souls in health in this world; Christ and his disciples how to save them for the next; which of the two will you have to be your masters ? He makes himself noted who, in his disputations, teaches how such a thing hurts the eyes, this the head, that the stomach; pulse are windy, cheese offends the stomach, milk hurts the head, water the lungs ; whence it happens that in all the rivers, fields, gardens, and markets, there is scarce to be found any thing fitting for a man to eat."

From these passages it is evident that the dietetic and therapeutic system of physic by no means pleased the Fathers or the monks; and, indeed it must have been discordant to the rules and regulations of good Catholics in general.

Cornelius Agrippa, whom we take to have been nearly the greatest man of his age, confirms the same censure on the dietetic doctors, and his remarks apply patly enough to Dr. Abernethy and his school, in the 19th century. "These doctors," says Agrippa, "command, forbid, curse, and discommend the meats and drinks that God has created; framing rules of diet difficult to be observed, and those morsels which they forbid others to taste of they themselves (as hogs eat acorns) greedily devour. And those laws of living which they prescribe to others, they themselves altogether neglect or contemn. For, should they live according to their own rules, they would run no small hazard of their health; and, should they permit their patients to live after their own examples, they would altogether lose their profits."

"But grant," continues Agrippa, (who never lost an opportunity of giving the monks a dry rap over the knuckles, for taking which liberty he was often within an ace of being roasted for a necromancer)," that these rules of the doctors apply to the monks, for whom, perhaps, it is not needful to take so much care of their healths as of their professions, yet the variety of dishes and feasts may not be unlawful for civil men to use, with consideration of their health. The first the art of dieting performs, the second the art of cookery, being the dressing and ordering of victuals. For which reason Plato calls it the 'flatteress of physic,' and many account it a part of dietary physic, though Pliny and Seneca, and the whole throng of other physicians, confess that manifold diseases proceed from the variety of costly food."

Now Asia, and the land of the East, is the first land of Coccayne, or country of good feeding that we read of. The Asiatics were so intemperate and luxurious in their feeding, that they were known by the surname of Asotæ, or Gluttons, or, more properly translated, Cockneys. If we were to make in

quiries of the board of East India Directors, ex-nabobs, &c. they would very probably inform us that the Asiatics have not yet forfeited their claim to this honourable epithet; or, if their tongues preserved silence, their livers would answer for them. For these livers of ours are very discrimi nating logicians, and easily detect the sophistry contained in that noted verse, "He that lives a good life is sure to live well."

It was from the East, the earliest land of Coccayne, that Greece learnt the great lesson of Cockneyship, and became the rival of her instructress. If the soldiers of Greece conquered Persia, the cooks of Persia conquered Greece, and exchange is no robbery. We shall not expatiate on Grecian cookery, lest we should so debauch our souls with its manifold luxuries as to become incapable of travelling into the next great kingdom of Coccayne, "the revel of the earth, the mask of Italy."

Asia and Greece both revenged themselves on their Roman conquerors, by making them the victims of triumphant luxury. Then Italy, in her turn, became the veritable land of Coccayne; and of her feast monarchs partook and deemed their dignity increased; and the stern Romans at length became the most unparalleled Cockneys under the sun.

Thus we read in Livy (as an old writer well observes), after the conquest of Asia and Greece, foreign luxury first entered Rome, and then the Roman people began to make sumptuous banquets. Then was a cook the most useful slave that could be, and began to be much esteemed and valued, and all bedabbled with broth and, bedaubed with soot, was welcomed out of the kitchen into the schools; and that which was before accounted as a vile slavery, was honoured as an art whose chiefest care is only to search out everywhere the provocatives of appetite, and study in all places for dainties to satisfy a most profound gluttony; abundance of which Gellius cites out of Varro, as the peacock from Samos, the Phrygian turkey, cranes from Melos, Ambracian kids, the Tartesian mullet, trouts from Pessenuntium, Tarentine oysters, crabs from Chios, Tatian nuts, Egyptian

dates, and Iberian chesnuts. All which enormous bills of fare were found out for the wicked wantonness of luxury and gluttony.

But the glory and fame of this art, Apicius, above all others, claimed to himself: from him, as Septimus Florus witnesses, there arose a certain sect of cooks that were called Apicians, propagated, as it were, in imitation of the philosophers, of whom thus Seneca has written: " Apicius (says he) lived in our age; who, in that city out of which philosophers were banished as corrupters of youth, professing the art of cookery, hath infected the whole rising generation with the most astounding luxuriousness."

Pliny calls this Apicius the gulf and barathrum of all youth. At length so many subjects of taste, so many provocatives of luxury, so many varieties of dainties were invented by these Apicians, that it was thought requisite to restrain the Juxury of the kitchen. Hence all those ancient sumptuary laws. Lucius Flaccus, and his colleague censors, put Duronius out of the Senate, for that, as a tribune of the people, he went about to abrogate a law made against the excessive prodigality of feasts. In defence whereof, how impudently Duronius ascended the pulpit of orations : "There are bridles (said he) put into your mouths, most noble senators, in no wise to be endured. Ye are bound and fettered with the bitter chains of servitude. Here is an old antiquated sumptuary law which commands us to be frugal; let us abrogate such a command, deformed with the rust of ghastly antiquity; for to what purpose have we liberty, if it be not lawful for them that will to kill themselves with luxury?"

At length the character of Italy, as the land of Coccayne and the empire of good living, got sadly impaired by the ravages of Huns, Goths, Visigoths, Saracens, and rascally barbarians of all kinds, that came down like a darksome cloud of locusts, and demolished her loaves and fishes before she could say Jack Robinson. In fact, Virgil's vision of the banquet and the harpies was most painfully realized in his dear Italia, which still reverences him as a wizard and arch magician, on account of such prophetical allusions

sprinkled through his works. As we do not, however, give much credit to the Sortes Virgilianæ, we shall say no more about it.

Thus the ever memorable land of Coccayne was for some time overwhelmed by the invasion of barbarism, not to say cannibalism, which is the very basest kind of cookery we are aware of. Dear land of Coccayne, for centuries thy very existence was a problem: the disciples of Epicurus, with a portentous elongation of physiognomy, went seeking thee as carefully as Ceres sought Proserpine, and, alas! found only that you were not to be found.

Sometimes they seemed to recover a glimpse of thy august vision in the states of Italy, but they only aggravated the disappointment of the surviving Cockneys, who then wandered, like the Jews or the Gypsies, up and down the earth, yet could find no country like their own. Then was the land of Coccayne likened unto the land of Utopia, "that place called No Place," or the island of Atalantes, or the land of Limbo.

At length, however, the great vision of Coccayne once more gladdened the heart of disconsolate Cockneys. Her first appearance was at Florence, then at Venice, then at Palma. All these became celebrated in turn as the veritable Coccayne; resuscitated, as it were, from the grave for the benefit of all good fellows. As the empire of Coccayne advanced, savagery and barbarism retired, and civilization and good-humour resumed their legitimate ascendancy.

The empire of Coccayne then travelled west, and was long pre-eminent in France. France and Paris are lauded as the land of Coccayne in numberless old songs, and the French were entitled Coccainées par excellence.

But the empire of Coccaigne did not confine itself to France; it travelled over to Great Britain, and took up its residence in London, which has long appropriated the title to herself, with a most commendable enthusiasm. The epithet Cockney has for ages so fastened itself on the inhabitants of our English Babylon, that not all the steam-engines in the country could now explode it. In fact, it sits so

happily on the natives of "the great metropolis," that nothing would console us for the loss of it.

Now let us confirm our statements by a few authorities; for we entirely agree with our legal brethren, that assertions are not worth a crack without confirmation and proof to back them withall.

In Toone's Etymological Dictionary (a very useful little book), we find the following: "In a mock-heroic poem in the Sicilian dialect, published at Palermo 1674, a description is given of Palma, as the Citta di Cuccagna; and Boileau calls Paris "un pais de coccaigne," representing it as a country of dainties; which seems to have been the meaning of the word as understood by the French. In England, no precise time can be ascertained as to its first introduction. The earliest poem in which it is mentioned is a very ancient one in the Normanno-Saxon dialect,

"Far in sea by West Spayne Is a lond yhote Cocayng." In a very curious poem called the "Tournement of Tottenham," said to be written in the reign of Edward III. the word Cokeney is used, but whether as applied to a cook or a dish is a matter of conjecture:

"At that feast they were served in rich aray,

Every five and five had a cokenay."

Which reminds us of the Welshman's boast:

"Nine cooks at least in Wales one wed

ding sees."

In Nares's Glossary are the following remarks: "What this word Cockney means, is well known-how it is derived, there is much dispute. The etymology seems most probable which derives it from cookery. Le pais de cocagne, in French, means a country of good cheer; in old French, coquaine. Cocagna, in Italian, has the same meaning. Both might be derived from This famous country, if it coquina. could be found, is described as a region, where the hills were made of sugar candy,' and the loaves ran down the hills crying 'come eat me !'"'

It is spoken of by Balthazar Bonifacius, who says, "Regio quædam est, quam Cucaniam vocant ex abundantia panis qui cuca Illyrice dicitur. “There GENT. MAG. VOL. X.

is a certain region called Cocagne, from the abundance of bread, which the Illyrians denominate cuca, or cake. In this place, he says, "rorabit bucceis, pluet pultibus, ninget laganis, et grandinabit placentis:" which we thus translate, it rains puddings, drizzles sausages, snows pancakes, and hails apple-dumplings.

The Cockney spoken of by Shakspeare seems to have been a cook, as she was making a pie. "Cry to it, nuncle, as the Cockney did to the eels when she put them into the paste alive." Yet it appears to denote mere simplicity; since the fool adds, “ "Twas her brother that in pure kindness to his horse buttered his hay." lines in "Camden's Remains," seem to make Cockney a name for London as well as for its citizens.

Some

In the "Cyclopedia Metropolitana," we find the following under the word.

"Dr. Thomas Henshaw, sagaciously, as he is wont, (Skinner observes,) derives Cockney from the French accoquina, to wax lazy, become idle, and grow slothful as a beggar."

The passages brought in illustration are these:

"And when this jape is told another day,
I will arise and auntre it, by my fay;
I shall be holden a daff cokanay;
Unhardy is unsely, as men say."
Chaucer.

"I speak not in dispraise of the falcons, but of them that keep them like Cokeneys." Sir Thos. Elliot.