Chevaliers and abbes.

We cannot bring this article to a better end than to make an honourable mention of two corporations we saw in all their glory:  we mean the Chevaliers and the Abbes.

How completely gourmand they were.  Their expanded nostrils, their acute eyes, and coral lips could not he mistaken, neither could their gossiping tongue; each class, however, ate in a peculiar manner.

There was something military in the bearing of the Chevaliers.  They ate their delicacies with dignity, worked calmly, and cast horizontal looks of approbation at both the master and mistress of the house.

The Abbes however, used to come to the table with more care, and reached out their hands as the cat snatches chestnuts from the fire.  Their faces were all enjoyment, and there was a concentration about their looks more easy to conceive of, than to describe.

As three-fourths of the present generation have seen nothing like either the Abbes, or Chevaliers, and as it is necessary to understand them, to be able to appreciate many books written in the eighteenth century, we will borrow from the author of the Historical Treatise on Duels, a few pages which will fully satisfy all persons about this subject. (See Varieties, No. 20.)

    Longevity of gourmands.

I am happy, I cannot be more so, to inform my readers that good cheer is far from being injurious, and that all things being equal, gourmands live longer than other people.  This was proved by a scientific dissertation recently read at the academy, by Doctor Villermet.

He compares the different states of society, in which good cheer is attended to, with those where no attention is paid to it, and has passed through every scale of the ladder.  He has compared the various portions of Paris, in which people were more or less comfortable.  All know that in this respect there is extreme difference, as for instance between the Faubourg St. Antoine and the Chaussee d’ Antin.

The doctor extended his research to the departments of France, and compared the most sterile and fertile together, and always obtained a general result in favor of the diminution of mortality, in proportion universally as the means of subsistence improve.  Those who cannot well sustain themselves will be at least wise, to know that death will deliver them soon.

The two extremes of this progression are, that in the most highly favored ranks of life but one individual in fifty dies, while of those who are poorer four do.

Those who indulge in good cheer, are rarely, or never sick.  Alas! they often fall into the domain of the faculty, who call them good patients:  as however they have no great degree of vitality, and all portions of their organization are better sustained, nature has more resources, and the body incomparably resists destruction.

This physiological truth may be also sustained by history, which tells us that as often as impervious circumstances, such as war, sieges, the derangement of seasons, etc., diminish the means of subsistence, such times have ever been accompanied by contagious disease and a great increase of mortality.