Gerard, however, speaks of “pompions,” which are never eaten raw, but mixed with apples in pies, a use which he justly condemns, or boiled in milk or fried in butter. To the latter process it is still often subjected on the Continent, where too it is yet more commonly made into soups and stews, a system we should do well to adopt here, where the worst method of disposing of it is now almost the only one prevalent; since soupe à la citrouille—very easily made by merely stewing sliced pumpkin in milk, enriched with a little butter or gravy, and seasoned with pepper and salt[1]—is a dish few would not relish and find vastly preferable to the insipid preparation known as pumpkin pie. If, however, that delicacy be desired, perhaps the best mode of obtaining it is the one followed by the villagers in some parts of England, who cut a hole in the side of their pumpkins, scoop out the seeds and stringy part, then stuffing the cavity with apples and spice, bake the whole, and eat the case and its contents together. Plainly boiled in water, the pumpkin may be eaten, like its relative the vegetable marrow, as a vegetable, but the tender tops of the shoots of the plant, boiled like greens, are superior to the fruit for this purpose. In judging of the latter, mere size and weight carry the day, for there being very little difference of quality in a fruit having at its best so little pretensions to flavour, quantity becomes the chief consideration. In this respect the mammoth gourd, or large American pumpkin, towers supreme over the mightiest of its brethren, weighing sometimes over two hundred pounds, and which, exceeding in its vast dimensions the requirements of any single family consumption, is mostly sold in London shops in slices at the price of about twopence per pound.
Clumsily bulky in its huge growth, yet offering but few charms to the taster, the pumpkin early furnished a comparison for persons whose heads were larger than their intellects, and which it would seem “the world would not willingly let die,” since it has survived from the time of Tertullian to the present day, the initial letter only slightly hardening when we now apply to a thick-headed clown the appellation of a bumpkin.
THE CEMETERY AT MUNICH.
It is only in later years, and since the passing of the Bill against intermural interments, that the English people have become, in some degree, familiarised with those picturesque and attractive places of burial, which have been at once the solace and the ornament of continental towns, affording not only a resting-place for the departed, and a seemly retreat for sorrowing relatives and friends, but a promenade for the meditative, amidst gardens and alleys, that speak of death, but tell their tale in a soothing spirit. It is only at a compatively late period that we have permitted ourselves, in this country, any sympathy with those gentle and graceful cares, and affecting symbols of lingering attachment, which our continental neighbours have long since been accustomed to bestow upon the last dwelling-place of those they loved or respected in life. These testimonies of love beyond the grave—the carefully tended rose-tree—the garlands of variously-coloured everlastings—the handful of freshly-gathered flowers, flung upon the tomb—the embedded plants, in themselves the poetical symbols of “death in the midst of life” as they fade and die away, but no less emblems of a second life and resurrection, as they spring forth again in verdure and fresh bud after the death of winter,—all these graceful and touching evidences of sorrow seeking to find a soothing vent in garnishing the holy place where the loved one awaits a second life, were long unknown among us. In continental countries these posthumous traits of the poetry of feeling struck us with surprise; and, although they found response in some English hearts, would still as frequently—or perhaps more frequently—elicit the genuine matter-of-fact John Bullish exclamation of “humbug,” as obtrusively and openly displayed excesses of sensibility, which our own manners and habits had never accustomed us to see: and here lay the gravamen. Since the introduction of similar traits of feeling among us, we have taken to them not unkindly. In former days our very localities afforded us no scope for the exercise of such a train of associations. The spirit was impossible to be fostered in the close and choked-up burial-place of the town, o’ertopping in its mass of corruption, gathered for centuries past, the streets that seethed with busy or careless life, and offering only the dismal aspect of blackened grave-headings, for only a brief space white, interspersing flagged monumental tablets, from which all inscription was wont quickly to disappear, as if as glad to be rid of its duty of recording, as the living might have been of the due meed of memory.
These places told of little more than the desire to put away death and decay. The English country churchyard, it is true, has had its tribute of romance from the poet and the novelist; and perhaps there are few of us who have not known some picturesque spot of the kind, the very sight of which commanded us to draw forth sketch-book and pencil, and where there was always some warm and cozy nook on the sunny side, that a weary octogenarian might gaze upon lovingly, with the thought that he might rest there “so comfortably” when all was over. But, in general, like its hideous and dismal town rival, it failed in all the attributes that would have fostered the spirit of adornment, or the feeling of graceful tribute to those who lay beneath the sod. It was but the skirting-ground of the village pathway, along which the hundreds plodded on, without a thought of turning aside to gaze upon the grave of any lost one. It was the playground of the village scamps, who played leap-frog over the grave-stones, and pitch and toss between the mounds; it was the pasture-field of the Vicar’s mare and cows; it was the gossip-shop of Sundays. It was all this: and if it condescended to any romance, admitted so unpractical a feeling- ↑ The most economical recipe for this excellent soup is as follows: 1 lb. pumpkin sliced and boiled in water till soft enough to pulp through a colander into a half-pint of hot milk; season, stir till smooth, give one boil, and then serve.
