peninsula could be seized. But before he could get ready for the movement Rosecrans was relieved of the command, and General Thomas assumed control, with General Grant in chief command. In the mean time the troops in Chattanooga were on the eve of starvation. "We are issuing," said General Gordon Granger, "quarter rations for breakfast only." But Thomas, on assuming command, and being urged by Grant to hold on to the strong-hold at all hazards, had telegraphed in reply, "I will hold the town until we starve ;" and the men cheerfully agreed to starve a while longer. On the arrival of General Grant the movements which Rosecrans had planned were begun. Two columns to seize the peninsula started simultaneously-the one from Bridgeport ander General Hooker, the other from Chattanooga under General W. F. Smith. Hooker moved overland along the railroad and seized upon Wauhatchie and three small hills near the mouth of Lookout Creek. Smith, with his command in pontoon boats, on the night of October 26, 1863, dropped down the Tennessee River, running past the rebel batteries to Brown's Ferry, where a prominent and commanding peak of hills on the peninsula was seized, and the boats were soon transformed into a pontoon bridge across the river at that point. General Hooker's position, which was only won after two very desperate engagements, one of which was fought at midnight, covered a road to Kelley's Ferry, a landing-place on the west side of the all-important peninsula; and the result of the whole operation was that a short and good road, only seven miles in length, was obtained from Chattanooga by way of Brown's Ferry to Kelley's Ferry; at which latter place the steamboats built by the troops landed supplies from Bridgeport. Supplies by this route could be very easily carried through in a day, and the army was very soon on full rations again. The success of these movements virtually raised the siege of Chattanooga, though Bragg did not immediately abandon his position before the town, and Grant was then too weak to attempt to force him to do so. But soon General Sherman's command from Memphis came to his assistance; and on November 24, 25, and 26, Grant moved out of the town, and, in a series of battles, whose tactics were not less brilliant in conception and successful in execution than the strategic operations which had gained and saved us the town, drove Bragg from every position which he had held, and captured nearly all his artillery and several thousand prisoners. An account of these grand battles does not, however, properly belong to the story of the Siege of Chattanooga. It is easy to imagine that there was little of beauty left to Chattanooga when the siege was ended. And little of its beauty would have returned to it with prosperity if it had depended upon the former citizens. But circumstances had turned Chattanooga into a great fortress, and when the siege was ended the engineers and quarter-masters of the army became the city's architects. They became indeed the " city fathers" of Chattanooga, and, unlike a great many other "city fathers," they had the city's good at heart. They may have been wanting in taste for the beautiful, but they had a full appreciation of the useful. They had a bad habit of forcing what might be well turned into a park to the base uses of the worn-out army animals, and stables and store - houses sprung up at their bidding in painful proximity to the handsomest residences. The rebel works on Cameron Hill were transformed into a reservoir; a confiscated flour-mill at the foot of that hill and on the bank of the Tennessee was forced to do duty in filling the reservoir with water, and thus Chattanooga boasts her waterworks. Into every Government work-shop and store-house, into every fort of the long line of works which encircle and protect the city the water-pipes were run, and the garrison if again besieged can never want for water. And the Tennessee, that "river in our rear," which in the dark days of the siege looked fearfully wide to the men when the pontoons were broken or a retreat was calculated, has been bridged by the energy of Quarter-Master-General Meigs with a handsome structure that robs the river of its terrors. Fire-engines too are among the public improvements introduced by the army, while private enterprise established hotels where guests provide their own blankets, billiard-rooms where an unengaged table was never to be had without waiting days for it, and a theatre where bad singers caricatured the negro to noisy andiences of the rougher sex only. Beyond the line of works the plow-share has sunk in the soil nobler and more beautiful furrows than the rifle-pits of the rebels; where but yesterday the contending armies clashed the peaceful rows of corn are massed in solid phalanx; the mountains have already been turned into vineyards, and the poor fellows in the hospitals on Lookout Mountain drink to their country in native wine. UNRETURNING. Now all the flowers that ornament the grass, I see them flourish as I see them fall! But he, who once was growing with the grass, The barren fields forget their barrenness, The soulless earth mates with these soulless things, Why should I not obtain my recompense? The budding spring should bring, or summer's prime, As the earth is when shrouded in the snow, Or passive, like it, when the boughs are stripped In autumn, and the leaves roll every where. And autumn's melancholy voice, in winds. To me a faded soul; for, as I said, Till the moon, pushing through the veiling cloud, Hangs naked in its heaving solitude: When feathery pines wave up and down the shore, MARLYLE, the dyspeptic, in one of his talks change, boiled in a huge pot over the fire. Kid, City Mr. Milburn, the Blind Preacher, lamb, fatted calf, or tolerable veal are the only tells how it happened that he came into "the direful persuasion that he was the miserable owner of a diabolical apparatus called a Stomach." Years before he had, in a rather notable essay entitled "Characteristics," propounded the idea that the sum of human well-being, physically considered, consisted in the fact that one did not know from sensation that he was the owner of any such "diabolical apparatus.' Whether the stomach, meaning thereby the whole digestive apparatus, is the fountain of all our woes, as all dyspeptics will aver with the Chelsea philosopher, may be a matter of doubt. But it is quite certain that the gustatory apparatus, that which consists of palate, tonguetip, and some others, stands on a quite different footing. To get a good dinner has been the great study of ages. Cooks have been the great experimenters. How from the raw materials which made up an old-time feast they have come to be able to serve up a Delmonico dinner would furnish a curious chapter in the history of civilization. delicacies named in early Greek, Roman, or Hebrew history. Bread of some sort was of early invention; but the Oriental bread was what we now call Johnny-cake-meal mixed up with water and baked in thin cakes. It took the Romans many a generation to get even as far as this. It was a long time before they got beyond puls, a thick pap made by boiling their meal or grain. This, say the dictionaries, "was the primitive food of the Romans before they became acquainted with bread." After a while the Roman cooks began to try strange experiments to satisfy the appetites of their patrons. The record of not a few of their dishes has come down to us. An odd thing was a "big feed" in the days of the Decline and Fall of Rome. During the French Revolution, we are told, some savant got up a regular Roman dinner; but the guests could barely swallow, and could no way keep down, the fare which Apicius and Lucullus had found dainties. Great men lived before Agamemnon, and doubtless there were geniuses among the cooks of the later days of Rome. But only think how few were the materials at their command. They had good meat, fair poultry, and not a bad asIn vegetables they were woeThey had never heard of a Then as for pastry, they Could one now have the best possible bill of fare for a dinner, say at any time from 500 to 3000 years ago, he would be astonished at its meagreness. The great eaters of whom Ho-sortment of fish. mer speaks had nothing better than a bit of lamb, fully deficient. kid, or calf roasted on a spit; or, by way of potato or a tomato. had no sugar. For every thing saccharine they | fruit having a fleshy pulp outside and a kernel had to depend upon honey and the "jams" of various fruits. It is funny indeed to read what old writers of good repute record about a certain sweet substance of which they had vaguely heard as existing in India or some other far-away region. Strabo tells doubtingly, being very careful to give as his authority Nearchus, the admiral who commanded the fleet of Alexander of Macedon in his invasion of India, that in this country "there are reeds which yield honey without bees." Seneca speaks of sugar in a way that shows how little he knew about it. "They say," he writes, "that among the Indians honey is found in the leaves of reeds, which either the dew of that climate or some humor of the reed itself makes sweet and luscious." The word which we have rendered "luscious" is pinguior, which should perhaps be rendered "thick" or "fatty." In which case we must suppose that the reed-honey of which the Roman philosopher had heard was most likely nothing but molasses. Pliny comes a little nearer in describing sugar. "Arabia, and more especially India," he says, "produce saccharum. This is honey gathered from reeds; it is a kind of white gum, brittle between the teeth, the largest pieces as big as a hazel-nut; only used in medicine." One would imagine from this that some bits of sugar-candy, or more likely medicated lozenges, had by this time found their way into Europe. or seeds within; thus distinguished from "nuts." Thus apples, oranges, peaches, pomegranates, etc., were all mala-"apples;" and most of them would seem to have been of such a quality that they were fairly described as mala-"bad." Thus peaches, like the tomato among us, were long thought to be poisonous. Pliny records, though he doubts the story, that it was reported that the Persian kings used to send this fruit to Egypt to poison the natives. He, however, thought it very harmless, having more juice and less smell than any fruit in the world, and yet caused thirst in those who ate it. They had, he says, long tried to raise it in Italy, but with indifferent success; nor was it common in Greece or Natolia. Figs and dates were good, but their range was very limited. Olives were abundant, but these are hardly to be regarded as fruits. Apart from their oil, which went largely into cookery, they were used chiefly as pickles and relishes. When we have named salt, onions, leeks, garlic, and mustard we have about gone through the list of condiments at the disposal of an ancient cook. These worthies, indeed, tried hard to get up toothsome dishes, and resorted to some of the oddest means. Thus, it is said that eels feasted upon human flesh gained great delicacy of flavor, and so the great Romans used to chop up a slave now and then and throw the fragments into their eel-ponds. We trust that this story is The ancient diners had doubtless some very fabulous. A farrow sow was beaten to death good fruits, but only in scanty variety. When with her brood within her. The whole mass, there was little commerce no one could have including "trail," as woodcock fanciers of our fruits which were not the produce of his own day would say, was then roasted, and reckoned immediate locality. Grapes were widely spread a great delicacy. A great dish at a great dinand exceedingly good. We find apple's men- ner was a peacock roasted whole. Now the tioned as coming last in a Roman dinner. Ab flesh of this bird of the starry tail is about as ovo usque ad mala-" from egg to apples"-took savory as so much roasted corn-shucks would in the whole of a repast; and hence, by meta- be. When the lordly fowl was served up there phor, the beginning and the end of any im- was little that had ever belonged to him except portant matter. But it must be borne in mind his brilliant feathers and exuberant tail. All that under the word malum, which we render the rest was stuffing and forcemeat. "apple," the Romans described any kind of As for potables the ancients were even worse off than for eatables. They indeed had wine; but what wine? The best wine known to the famous bibbers whom Mæcenas gathered around MEXICAN CHOCOLATE. VOL. XXXVI.-No. 212.-L | his hospitable board was just grape cider, and nothing more. It was drunk before it had time to "turn." Hard cider, though pressed from the best of grapes, had not yet come into vogue. Some species of wine contained sufficient native alcohol to keep them for a considerable while, and so they doubtless improved by age. Among these was the famous Falernian, the best of which we judge to have been very like a tolerable Madeira. Other sorts, which would not keep, were boiled down into a jam, flavored with sundry drugs and spices, and when drunk were diluted with water. So frequent are the incidental notices of mixing wine with water that people have jumped to the conclusion that the Greeks and Romans were predeterminately temperate. In our view all this rests upon sheer misconception. We think their wine and water was just grape jelly diluted with water so as to be drinkable. What the imbibers of Imperial Tokay, rare old Madeira, Port, Burgundy, or Champagne-to say nothing of such rare things as Johannisberg, a dozen bottles of which is a fit present for an emperor to receive or bestow-would say to the rarest wines known to the ancients we will not venture to imagine. Of the whole class of fermented drinks we do not propose to speak at length. Suffice it to say, that while beverages of this class have been known for centuries, the man is now living whose father or father's father never drank a fair glass of ale, porter, stout, or lager. Nor do we propose to speak of the odd fermented drinks of uncivilized nations: the fermented |