Londoners are particularly partial to very white bread. Now this quality can only be obtained by the admixture of alum with the flour, in order to overcome the partial discoloration which takes place during the fermenting process even in pure flour; damaged flour, which bakers use in the poorer districts, in consequence of its dark appearance even before fermentation, requires a much more liberal allowance of the bleaching alum. Dr. Hassall, in his work on the Adulteration of Food, devotes a special chapter to the falsification of bread in the metropolis. Out of twenty-four loaves, purchased indiscriminately from bakers residing in different parts of London, he found every one adulterated with alum, the degree of adulteration corresponding with the poverty of the neighbourhood in which it had been bought. Thus it is clear that the ordinary bread is contaminated with a pernicious drug. The quantity thus taken at one time is small, it is true, but its repetition from day to day cannot fail to exercise a considerable influence upon the digestive organs, especially in young children. The aërated machine-made bread does not require the addition of alum to whiten it, the energy of the kneading apparatus transferring even the darkest spurred flour into perfectly white loaves. The poor journeyman baker, no less than the public, will be the gainer by the application of machinery to the operation of mixing, inasmuch as it will at once lift a very clumsy handicraft, carried on by small masters, with insufficient means, into a manufacture of the first class, necessitating the employment of large capital. The steam-bakery of Messrs. Peek, Frean, & Co., for instance, where we saw Dr. Dauglish’s bread machinery at work, contained workshops as spacious as those of a cotton mill, contrasting most favourably with the miserable, fetid dens in which our metropolitan bread is at present made. The air is pure, the temperature moderate, and the time occupied in the manufacture of the loaf so short (an hour and a half), that the operatives are entirely exempt from the fearful amount of illness and mortality which exists among those employed by low-priced bakers. The introduction of steam machinery into the trade is, in fact, as great a boon to the poor mechanic, as the invention of the sewing machine is to the tailor and sempstress. Iron limbs worked by steam muscles, it is clear, will ere long lift the working man above the mere drudgery of his task in most handicrafts, and prepare the way, more than any other circumstance, for their ultimate elevation in our social system.
LIFE IN A FRENCH KITCHEN. By C.
(Concluded from p. 198.)
Louis Vélay is very enthusiastic about the march to London. Like all his countrymen he ignores our army altogether, with the exception of a few regiments for our colonies, and the Guards which protect the Queen and the Bank of England.
“You have no army,” he says, “you cannot bring ten thousand men into the field without leaving London undefended. So how can you gain battles on land?”
That is a settler, and I am fairly mobbed in the kitchen between Vélay and the lieutenant.
One day I ventured to suggest that we stood our ground at Waterloo, upon which the whole party in the kitchen (except Marguérite, who, dear girl, always takes the part of the oppressed, right or wrong, and who on this subject has some German tendencies), stood up, and for five minutes shouted at the top of their voices, gesticulating as if receiving words from their mouths into their hands and throwing them into my face. This was unanswerable. I shrugged my shoulders as they did when words failed them; but, next morning, when Vélay was calm, I asked him what they had said, and he informed me that it was a matter of history (French) that Wellington had actually commenced a retreat upon Brussels when Blucher came up and saved the day.
Although I would not allow my friends to ignore our army altogether, yet I could not but confess to myself that they were right to a great extent. The French army of a half a million is available to-morrow, and a conscription would give the pick of as many men as might be required to recruit it. When the Emperor declares war, he will not give us time to organise new regiments or to call out the remainder of the militia. There is no doubt but that the twenty miles of sea is as good as an army of two hundred thousand men at least; but suppose the Channel once crossed by an enemy, what have we to oppose to him?
It is asserted that we can bring into the field, on a point between London and the south coast, an army of twenty thousand men, part of which must be composed of militia. That is all.
The first thing that strikes an English officer is the slovenly manner in which French troops march and carry the firelock. Even in the streets of Paris they do not pay the music or drums the compliment of marching in step. Nothing appears to be required of them, but to keep the correct wheeling distance of the formation, and to carry the firelock on the named shoulder. An English militia regiment, after a month’s training, marches more regularly, and has a better parade use of the firelock than the French Infantry. There is an apparent want of precision in their evolutions. In the wheel of companies the men do not circle round, but make a half face outwards and shuffle up until they arrive in succession in the new direction; and in deploying into line points are not placed for each company, but it is done on a distant point. But perhaps it is better thus to practise on parade what men will have to do in action. A captain with us has to dress his men from the front of another company, which in action may have already commenced firing. Among old soldiers, as well as young, firing is rather infectious, and when once begun, with or without an order, it is very difficult to stop, and they care very little what is in front of them.
French troops are generally described as being quick in reforming when thrown into disorder—a great quality—and as seldom being more irregular in their formations in face of an enemy than on parade; whereas we exact a precision at drill, which is thrown to the winds the moment we go into action. I have heard several old officers