Our supremacy in this matter of the table came with little taking of thought; what we should now do is to reflect upon the things which used to be instinctive, perceive the reasons of our excellence, and set to work to re-establish it.  Of course the vilest cooking in the kingdom is found in London; is it not with the exorbitant growth of London that many an ill has spread over the land?  London is the antithesis of the domestic ideal; a social reformer would not even glance in that direction, but would turn all his zeal upon small towns and country districts, where blight may perhaps be arrested, and whence, some day, a reconstituted national life may act upon the great centre of corruption.  I had far rather see England covered with schools of cookery than with schools of the ordinary kind; the issue would be infinitely more hopeful.  Little girls should be taught cooking and baking more assiduously than they are taught to read.  But with ever in view the great English principle—­that food is only cooked aright when it yields the utmost of its native and characteristic savour.  Let sauces be utterly forbidden—­save the natural sauce made of gravy.  In the same way with sweets; keep in view the insurpassable English ideals of baked tarts (or pies, if so you call them), and boiled puddings; as they are the wholesomest, so are they the most delicious of sweet cakes yet invented; it is merely a question of having them well made and cooked.  Bread, again; we are getting used to bread of poor quality, and ill-made, but the English loaf at its best—­such as you were once sure of getting in every village—­is the faultless form of the staff of life.  Think of the glorious revolution that could be wrought in our troubled England if it could be ordained that no maid, of whatever rank, might become a wife unless she had proved her ability to make and bake a perfect loaf of bread.

XII.

The good S—–­ writes me a kindly letter.  He is troubled by the thought of my loneliness.  That I should choose to live in such a place as this through the summer, he can understand; but surely I should do better to come to town for the winter?  How on earth do I spend the dark days and the long evenings?

I chuckle over the good S—–­’s sympathy.  Dark days are few in happy Devon, and such as befall have never brought me a moment’s tedium.  The long, wild winter of the north would try my spirits; but here, the season that follows autumn is merely one of rest, Nature’s annual slumber.  And I share in the restful influence.  Often enough I pass an hour in mere drowsing by the fireside; frequently I let my book drop, satisfied to muse.  But more often than not the winter day is blest with sunshine—­the soft beam which is Nature’s smile in dreaming.  I go forth, and wander far.  It pleases me to note changes of landscape when the leaves have fallen; I see streams and ponds which during summer were hidden; my favourite lanes have an unfamiliar aspect, and I become better acquainted with them.  Then, there is a rare beauty in the structure of trees ungarmented; and if perchance snow or frost have silvered their tracery against the sober sky, it becomes a marvel which never tires.