With bread and cheese and kisses for daily fare, life is held to be perfect by the poet. But love may grow bitter before cheese loses its savour. Therefore the wise, who value the pleasures of the table above tender dalliance, put their faith in strong Limburger or fragrant Brie, rather than in empty kisses. If only this lesson of wisdom could be mastered by all men and women, how much less cruel life might be!

Nor is cheese without its poetry to comfort the hater of pure prose. Once the "glory of fair Sicily," there must ever linger about it sweet echoes of Sicilian song sung under the wild olives and beneath the elms, where Theocritus "watched the visionary flocks." Did not "a great white cream-cheese" buy that wondrous bowl—the "miracle of varied work"—for which Thyrsis sang the pastoral song? Cheese-fed were the shepherds who piped in the shadow of the ilex tree, while the calves were dancing in the soft green grass; cheese-scented was the breath of the fair maidens and beautiful youths they loved. Is there a woman with soul so dead, who, when in a little country inn fresh cheese is laid before her, cannot fancy that she sees the goats and kids among the tamarisks of the sun-kissed Sicilian hills, and hears the perfect voices of Daphnis and Menalcas, the two herdsmen "skilled in song"?

Perhaps because cheese has been relegated to the last course at midday breakfast, or at dinner, has it lost much of its charm for the heedless. But who, indeed, playing with peach or orange at dessert, knows the fruit's true flavour as well as he who plucks it fresh from the tree while wandering through the peach orchards of Delaware or the orange groves of Florida? Take a long walk over the moors and through the heather, or cycle for hours along winding lanes, and then, at noon, eat a lunch of bread and cheese, and—even without the kisses—you will find in the frugal fare a godlike banquet. Time was when bits cut from the huge carcase of a well-battered Cheddar, washed down with foaming shandygaff, seemed more delicious far than the choicest dishes at the LapÉrouse or Voisin's. Memory journeys back with joy to the fragrant, tough, little goat's cheese, with flask of Chianti, set out upon the rough wooden table in front of some wayside vine-trellised albergo, while traveller and cycle rested at the hour when shade is most pleasant to men. How many a tramp, through the valleys and over the passes of Switzerland, has been made the easier by the substantial slice of good GruyÈre and the cup of wine well cooled in near snow-drifts! How many rides awheel through the pleasant land of France have been the swifter for the Camembert and roll devoured by the way!

Places and hours there are when cheese is best. But seldom is it wholly unwelcome. From dinner, whatever may then be its limitations, some think it must never be omitted. Remember, they say, as well a woman with but one eye as a last course without cheese. But see that you show sympathy and discretion in selecting the variety most in harmony with your menu, or else the epicure's labours will indeed be lost. It is not enough to visit the cheesemonger's, and to accept any and every kind offered. The matter is one requiring time and thought and long experience. You must understand the possibilities of each cheese chosen, you must bear in mind the special requirements of each meal prepared. Preposterous it would be truly to serve the mild-flavoured plebeian species from Canada or America after a carefully ordered dinner at Verrey's; wasteful, to use adorable Port Salut or aromatic Rocquefort for a pudding or a Welsh rabbit.

Study gastronomic proprieties, cultivate your imagination, and as the days follow each other fewer will be your mistakes. Heavy Stilton and nutritious Cheddar, you will know, belong by right to undisguised joint and irrepressible greens: to a "good old-fashioned English dinner" they prove becoming accompaniments. Excellent they are, after their fashion, to be honoured and respected; but something of the seriousness and the stolidity of their native land has entered into them, and to gayer, more frivolous moods they are as unsuited as a sermon to a ballroom. If, however, to the joint you cling with tenacity, and solemn Stilton be the cheese of your election, do not fail to ripen it with port of the finest vintage or good old ale gently poured into holes, here and there scooped out for the purpose, and then filled once more with the cheese itself.

Strength, fierce in perfume and flavour alike, lies in Limburger, but it is strength which demands not beef or mutton, but wurst and sauerkraut. Take it not home with you, unless you would place a highly-scented barrier between yourself and your friends; but, in deep thankfulness of heart, eat it after you have lunched well and heartily in the Vienna Cafe, which overlooks Leicester Square, or in that other which commands Mudie's and Oxford Street. And thanks will be deepened a hundredfold if, while eating, you call for a long refreshing draught of Munich beer.

Sweet, redolent of herbs, are gracious Gorgonzola, of which such ribald tales are told by the irreverent, and royal Rocquefort, in its silver wrapping; eaten after "the perfect dinner," each has merit immeasurable—merit heightened by a glass of Beaune or Chambertin. Then, too, is the hour for Port Salut, with its soothing suggestion of monastic peace and contentment, alone a safeguard against indigestion and other unspeakable horrors; if you respect your appetite seek it nowhere save in the German delicatessen shop, but there order it with an easy conscience and confidence in the white-coated, white-aproned ministering spirit at the counter. Thither also turn for good Camembert; but, as you hope for pleasure in the eating, be not too ready to accept the first box offered: test the cheese within with sensitive finger, and value it according to its softness, for an unripe Camembert, that crumbles at touch of the knife, is deadlier far than all the seven deadly sins. It should be soft and flowing almost as languid Fromage de Brie, indolent and melting on its couch of straw. Beyond all cheese, GruyÈre calls for study and reflection, so many are the shams, by an unscrupulous market furnished, in its place. As palely yellow as a Liberty scarf, as riddled with holes as cellular cotton, it should be sweet as Port Salut, and yet with a reserve of strength that makes it the rival of Limburger.

But blessed among cheeses, a romance in itself, is the creamy, subtle little Suisse, delectable as Dumas calls it. Soft and sweet as the breath of spring, it belongs to the season of lilacs and love. Its name evokes a vision of Paris, radiant in the Maytime, the long avenues and boulevards all white and pink with blossoming horse-chestnuts, the air heavy laden with the fragrance of flowers; a vision of the accustomed corner in the old restaurant looking out upon the Seine, and of the paternal waiter bearing the fresh Suisse on dainty green leaf. Life holds few such thrilling interludes! You may eat it with salt, and think yourself old and wise; but why not be true to the spirit of spring? Why not let yourself go a little, and, eating your Suisse with sugar, be young and foolish and unreasonably happy again?

Authorities there be who rank the Broccio of Corsica above the Suisse, and credit it with delicious freshness and Virgilian flavour. To taste it among its wild hills, then, would be well worth the long journey to the island in the Mediterranean. In the meantime, however, none need quarrel with Suisse. Hardly a country or district in the world really that has not its own special cheese; he who would discover them all and catalogue them must needs write a treatise on geography.

But to eat cheese in its many varieties, with butter or salt or sugar, as the case may be, and to think its mission thus fulfilled, would be to underestimate its inexhaustible resources. Innumerable are the masterpieces the culinary artist will make of it. In an omelet you would pronounce it unsurpassable, so long as kind fate did not set before you the consummate Fondue. As a pudding you would declare it not to be approached, if sometimes crisp cheese straws were not served with dinner's last course. On an ocean voyage, Welsh-rabbit late at night will seem to you the marvel of marvels; on a railway journey a cheese sandwich at noon you will think still more miraculous—but let the sandwich be made of brown bread, and mix butter and mustard and anchovies with the cheese. The wonders that may be worked with Parmesan alone—whether in conjunction with macaroni, or soup, or cauliflower, or many a dish beside—would be eloquent text for a new chapter.