of the day. One of the literati was carving a haunch of venison. He sent a liberal portion to another of the elect -not the lord mayor or the sheriff.

"I thank you for my venison, Master Shallow," quoth the helped.

"Master Page, much good may it do your good heart," was the apt reply.

"Ah!" cried a third, who was helped to a slice nearest the edge, "that was the most unkindest cut of all ;" and immediately added, as the carver loaded his plate with sweet sauce, "Ohe! Jam satis."

66

Why, it isn't Jam," said a fourth; we authors all eat jelly with our venison."

"Ever since the days of Aulus Gelli-us," muttered a fifth.

A hundred puns and repartees, all full as bad, and therefore quite as pleasant, went round.

"Voilà, mon ami, voilà la honte de l'Angleterre, aussi grande que le tread-mill! c'est cette fourchette-là," exclaimed. a talented-looking Frenchman to his opposite neighbour, having made various vain attempts to eat, with the aid of a two-pronged steel fork, some green peas which had been forced for this occasion.

“Oui, mon cher," replied his friend, "je vois bien qu'elle vous met aux travaux forcés."

"What language is thot?" asked one of the Scotch authors.

“Gallic,” said B.

"Nae, I'll be hanged if it's Gaelic," replied the Scot, "I dinna come frae the braes o' Bannock to be bamboozled that a-way."

"And who is the indignant Frenchman ?" said I to my friend.

"Felix B.," answered he, "one of the wittiest writers in the wittiest papers in Paris, the Miroir; he is just come over to comment on English customs, and he begins, you see, by a subject that has some point in it.

The table once more cleared, Non nobis, Domine, was warbled forth by the public singers with exquisite melody. Then came the toasts-then the speeches, all moderate and manly-just what a public character and a political oration ought to be; and in here paying my tribute to the talents of the performers, let me not forget the super-excellent toast

master, who, mounted on an eminence behind the Chief Magistrate's chair, with a glass in his hand, prepared the company for their duty by the oft-reiterated sounds of, "Are ye charged, gemmen ?""Gemmen, clear off your charge!"-and then repeated the announcement of each successive toast, in a voice which, compared to the chairman's, was a culverin replying to a popgun, and which, when his lordship called out, "Three times three!" answered, "Hip, hip, hurra!" as naturally as Paddy Blake's echo, that whenever any one cried, "How do you do this morning?" was sure to answer, " Very well, thank ye!"

I wish I could now come to a climax worthy of my subject, and say in one short sentence all that it deserves. I can truly declare that I never spent a more social evening, nor witnessed a feast of greater propriety. On quitting my lodgings I had provided myself with a case of lancets, in the certainty of having my smattering of surgical skill called in to the aid of some suffocating gourmand; but I solemnly protest I never saw more temperance or decorum in words or action. The only vein I saw breathed during the day was one of good fellowship and good humour. Men of many nations were there, English, Irish, and Scotch-with Germans, French, and other foreigners-but all, as it were, of one family. Men of all professions and parties, of the most opposite extremes, and all touching. Lawyers and clients, reviewers, and authors, smiling and chatting together -the wolf playing with the kid. Radicals and tories, Lord Mayor and minister, bandying compliments--the lamb lying down with the lion-all, in short, a scene of primitive simplicity and peace.

THE

PLEASURES OF THE TABLE,

So down they sat,

And to their viands fell; nor seemingly
The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss
Of theologians, but with keen despatch
Of real hunger.

MILTON.

I HAD long sought for the reasons of the outcry which some people raise against the pleasures of the table. Hard study of men and things led at length to the discovery. The causes are, weak stomachs, unsocial tempers, affected simplicity, and stinginess; always allowing some latitude to the convenient maxim, that there is no general rule without an exception or two. Thus there may be some who abstain from social enjoyments under such virtuous apprehension as that they might hurt their constitution; a few who do so from sectarian superstition; and others from cant. To stop the mouths of such cavillers is now my object.

Taking the subject in its plainest point of view, we should begin with infancy, and see what honest, unsophisticated Nature says and does. The first cry of childhood is for food; and when every other appetite is dead, that most wholesome of all continues to the extremity of (healthy) old age.

Nature thus gives her broadest sanction to this indulgence, and we may well exclaim with the poet

O foolishness of men! that lend their ears
To those budge doctors of the stoic fur,
And fetch their precepts from the cynic tub,
Praising the lean and sallow abstinence.

Children, in their innocence, are the greatest gluttons in the world, except old people perhaps. I have not examined

the latter so closely; but neither one nor the other are slaves to that artificial refinement which throws a bar against their comforts: the first have not learned these qualms, and the latter forget them. Amidst all the joys of my early life, some of the happiest were those snatched by stealth in the larder, the dairy, and the housekeeper's room; and I often taste, in fancy, the identical smack on my palate which followed the surreptitious delights of some violated creambowl or pot of preserves. I appeal to all my candid readers, to all, at least, who had the good fortune of passing their years of youth in the country-who with their brothers and sisters, (for there lay the great charm, after all,) a joyous little knot of freebooters, have stolen into the orchard, by a passage scratched through the white-thorn hedge; have lived hours entrenched in the turnip-field, or the lofty sanctuary of the bean-rows; sucked the new-laid eggs in the henhouse; made puddings of raw pease, with a paste of bread mixed up with pump-water, or river-water, or ditch-waterwhatever came first; lain listless under a gooseberry-bush, nibbling the large, hairy, green or red fruit, like young goats browsing on heath blossoms; or stolen a march on the dairymaid, and laughed at her from behind the hedge, when she found the cows had been milked. And then the blackberries-the crab-apples--the sloes- the sop in the pan! But why raise in my readers these mouth-watering reminiscences? why conjure up a feast of memory and flow of recollections, scarcely less undefined and shadowy than those of reason or the soul?

I am not a very old man, but old enough to have grown garrulous and discursive--old enough to know that he who has eaten the bread of bitterness, and drunk, the water, of disappointment, may be allowed the indulgence of a retrospect of whatever was of enjoyment. I therefore claim the privilege of dwelling awhile on my boyish days. Well do I remember when I thought the fate of Nebuchadnezzar by no means an unquestionable punishment; when I calculated the delights of his liberty, ranging the pastures with the cattle, eating clover to his heart's content, rolling on the grass, splashing in the rivulets, jumping the hedges, and learning no lessons! Thus balancing the phytivorous advantages of his degradation with the splendid miseries of his throne and greatness, I was very much tempted to consider

him most worthy of pity when the term of his probation expired.

But passing by the vapoury abstractions of my youthful mind, which led me into fanciful contemplations such as this, and turning to a less mighty personage than the last, I will regale my recollection with the picture of Old Edward the Butler. I have him this instant in my eye: his sleek hair combed nicely on his forehead, his rosy cheeks, carbuncled nose, liquorish lip-smacking smile, and true bon vivant glance which measures the merit, and tastes by anticipation, every dish on the table. He had a noble protuberance of belly, too, a real holyday rotundity, such as might be thought the legitimate consequence of earlier and better times, when "our ancestors ran Christmas-day, New-year'sday, and Twelfth-night, all into one, and kept the wassailbowl flowing the whole time." Such a man was old Edward the living epitome of good nature and good living, the breathing personification of enjoyment, the mortal type of merry-making, the Falstaff of real life, the very counterpart of Spenser's October :

I verily believe that this old servant was the primary cause of my relishing, as I have done through life, the good things of life. He used to secrete for me (and himself) the nicest imaginable tit-bits: used often and often to tip me his benevolent wink, as I passed the pantry-door; and many were the moments that we spent there, in hail-fellow-well-met companionship, discussing the remains of tarts, pies, and puddings,

His example was of one real benefit to me, however: he had no selfishness in him, and he taught me to despise gluttony, for he could never eat for eating sake. He would sooner let his most delicate morsels rot in a crust of mouldi ness them devour them alone.