I am very far from despising the science of gastronomy, but if I wished to institute a comparison between the tables of England and America, I could not do it without eating my way through the four seasons.  I will say that I did not think the bread from the bakers’ shops was so good as our own.  It was very generally tough and hard, and even the muffins were not always so tender and delicate as they ought to be.  I got impatient one day, and sent out for some biscuits.  They brought some very excellent ones, which we much preferred to the tough bread.  They proved to be the so-called “seafoam” biscuit from New York.  The potatoes never came on the table looking like new fallen snow, as we have them at home.  We were surprised to find both mutton and beef overdone, according to our American taste.  The French talk about the Briton’s “bifteck saignant,” but we never saw anything cooked so as to be, as we should say, “rare.”  The tart is national with the English, as the pie is national with us.  I never saw on an English table that excellent substitute for both, called the Washington pie, in memory of him whom we honor as first in pies, as well as in war and in the hearts of his countrymen.

The truth is that I gave very little thought to the things set before me, in the excitement of constantly changing agreeable companionship.  I understand perfectly the feeling of the good liver in Punch, who suggests to the lady next him that their host has one of the best cooks in London, and that it might therefore be well to defer all conversation until they adjourned to the drawing-room.  I preferred the conversation, and adjourned, indefinitely, the careful appreciation of the menu.  I think if I could devote a year to it, I might be able to make out a graduated scale of articles of food, taking a well-boiled fresh egg as the unit of gastronomic value, but I leave this scientific task to some future observer.

The most remarkable piece of European handiwork I remember was the steel chair at Longford Castle.  The most startling and frightful work of man I ever saw or expect to see was another specimen of work in steel, said to have been taken from one of the infernal chambers of the Spanish Inquisition.  It was a complex mechanism, which grasped the body and the head of the heretic or other victim, and by means of many ingeniously arranged screws and levers was capable of pressing, stretching, piercing, rending, crushing, all the most sensitive portions of the human body, one at a time or many at once.  The famous Virgin, whose embrace drove a hundred knives into the body of the poor wretch she took in her arms, was an angel of mercy compared to this masterpiece of devilish enginery.