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The School of Savarin: Physiology

Turning the leaves of the "Physiology," the reader will be impressed with the fecundity of an author who treats with equal fluency of foods and drinks, appetite and digestion, sport and old age, women and abbés, and all that appertains to the physiology of gastronomy. His portrait of a pretty gourmande under arms is a genre painting worthy of Gérard Douw or Van Mieris, while his Meditation on the end of the world might have been composed by a doctor of the Sorbonne. The chapter on digestion is full of practical advice, and from this his disquisitions on repose, on dreams, and on the influence of diet are a natural succession. In the chapter on dreams we are told that all foods which are slightly exciting cause people to dream-such as brown meat, pigeons, ducks, game, and, above all, hare the same property being also recognised in asparagus, celery, truffles, sweetmeats, and particularly vanilla. Equally suggestive are the essays on corpulence, leanness, and fasting, and the many racy anecdotes of the "Variétés," while his aphorisms must always occupy a place in epicurean literature.

Did Savarin feel a premonition of immediate death when he penned the verses which he entitled "The Agony-A Physiological Romance," and which conclude the work that has rendered his name a synonym for all that appertains to the table and its pleasures? "I feel through all my senses life's sad end, My dim eye sees the last few grains of sand Falling, Louisa weeps, my tender friend, And places on my breast her trembling hand.

The band of morning-callers troops apace, Not to return, they bid a last good-bye, The doctor leaves, the pastor takes his place, For I must die! "I fain would pray, my memory is gone; I fain would speak, my lips can frame no sound; I hear, though all is still, a singing tone, And a dull shadow seems to hover round; All is now cold and dark, my panting breast Exhausts itself in heaving one poor sigh, To wander round my lips in frozen rest, For I must die!"