mouthful, not to gratify but promote hunger, that he may devour some production imported at equal cost from another hemisphere. Lives, more valuable perhaps than his own, may have been sacrificed to pamper his appetite. Some fisherman's boat may have perished in the night-storm before that turbot was torn from the raging billows; the poacher may now lie mangled or dead who stole that pheasant from the preserve; and the glass he is lifting to his lips may be blushing with the blood of the smuggler. Those who do not die for him seem to live for him from the snow-covered hunter of the North to the sunburnt vintager of the South, all offer up to him the sacrifice of their toils and dangers.

Nor is it only in this remote worship that he is undergoing a living apotheosis. The waiters bow down before him: "præsens habebitur divus "a present Deity the walls resound; and even the subterranean cooks, scullions, and kitchen-maids, though they do not chaunt hymns with their lips, enact them with their hands; they talk with their fingers and digitate quotations from Shakspeare-" Laud we the gods, and let our crooked smoke climb to their nostrils."

How delightful the contrast of all this heartfelt homage,-this perfect and spotless candour of hospitality, with the hollow, sordid, and treacherous professions of the world, the lip-love of rivals, the warm words and cold looks of pretended friends; the Judas-like salutations of those who contract their hearts while they extend their arms; the falsehood of relations, who, while they wish us many happy new years, are secretly pining for our death; the duplicity of acquaintance, who are delighted to see us, and wish us at the devil; the forbidding looks of the wife if we go uninvited to a dinner; the broad hints of the husband if we protract our visit beyond the stipulated day; and the scowl of the servants wheresoever and whensoever we are doomed to accept of their bad offices. Enthroned in a tavern-chair, we seem to have dominion over mind as well as matter; to command the hearts as well as the hands of our species: thus uniting the charities and affections that delight the soul, with all the luxuries and gratifications that can recreate the sense.

And who is the happy individual whose presence commands this species of instant adoration from all' things animate and inanimate? Is it the prodigal son, for whose unexpected return hecatombs of fatted calves are to be slain? Is it some benefactor of his race, some patriot or hero, some grandee or sovereign of the country? Far from it. Any obscure or absolutely unknown individual may enjoy this temporary deification if he have but a few thin circular pieces of metal in his pocket. I question whether the advantages of the social system are ever concentrated into a more striking point of illustration; or the supremacy, the omnipotence of gold ever more undeniably manifested, than in this accumulation of power, by which the whole range of nature, with all its varieties and enjoyments, is converged into the narrow space of one room and one hour, and placed at the absolute disposal of the humblest individual in society.

So much homage and luxury, alike flattering to the spirit and the sense, form a dangerous possession to those who are not habituated to their enjoyment. A gentleman, in the enlarged sense of that word,

will have comprehension enough of intellect to distinguish between the substance and the accidents of human nature; he will know to what fortuitous circumstances his own elevation is attributable; and will never for a moment forget that a general urbanity and courteousness are the distinctive attributes of his character. There is an autocratical gentleman of a very different description, whose patent is in his pocket, and who, as if conscious of his total want of all other claims to respect, seems determined to evince that he possesses all the wealth that can be typified by arrogance and coarseness. As he swaggers into the room, making the floor resound with his iron heels, he stares at the company with an air that seems to be shaking his purse in their faces. The brass in his own is Corinthian; it is a mixture of other metals in which gold seems to predominate, and the precious compound actually appears to exude from every pore of his body. Swelling with self-importance, he gives the bell a violent pull, summons attention with a loud authoritative voice, puffs out the breath from his inflated cheeks, and might almost burst with the tumour of consequence had he not the waiter on whom to vent the superflux of his humours. As to the quid pro quo, or any system of equivalents, reducing the relation between himself and the landlord to one of simple barter or exchange, he understands it not. He is lavishing his money of his own free will and bounty, and has surely a right to take out the full value in insolence. Nothing is so genteel as fastidiousness; he abuses every thing, pretends to be poisoned with the viands, turns up his nose at the wines, wonders where the devil such trash was brewed, and thinks to obtain credit for a familiarity with more exalted modes of life by undervaluing the miserable luxuries of a tavern, although an inference diametrically opposite would certainly be much nearer to the truth. In addressing the waiter his tone varies from downright brutality to a mock and supercilious civility; though he is generally most delighted when he turns him into ridicule, and converts him into a butt for the exercise of his clumsy wit.

The object of his horseplay and rude raillery is himself not unworthy observation. As the butcher generally becomes fat and florid by inhaling the odours of raw flesh in the open air, the waiter commonly exhibits a stunted growth and sodden complexion from battening on the steam of dressed victuals in a close coffee-room. Not unfrequently his shin bone assumes that projecting curve which a medical friend of mine terms the Tibi-a Londinensis; his sallow face expresses shrewdness, selfishness, and a fawning imperturbable submission to every indignity. Aware of the necessity for some indisputable distinction between himself and such gentlemen as we have been describing, the rogue, with a sly satire, scrupulously condemns his legs to white cotton stockings, and is conscientious not to appear without a napkin beneath his arm. The difference is merely external; his is indeed the "meanness that soars and pride that licks the dust," but it has the same source as the haughty vulgarity of his insulter. He looks to the final shilling or half-crown, although it will be cast to him with an air that converts generosity itself into an offence. That is his pride of purse; and I know not which is the most revolting, the arrogant or the abject manifestation of the same feeling.

"They order these things better in France," and the interior economy and regulation of our taverns might, in many respects, be bettered by an imitation of our Gallic neighbours. No Parisian enters their public dining-rooms without taking off his hat, and bowing to the presiding deity of the bar. Taking his place in silence, and perusing the closely-printed folio Carte with a penetration proportioned to its bewildering diversity, he finally makes his selection, writes down the articles of his choice, and even the quantity of each, so as to prevent all mistake, upon slips of paper deposited on every table for that purpose, hands the record to an attendant, and betakes himself patiently to a newspaper until his orders appear before him in all their smoking and edible reality. There is rarely any calling of the waiter, and there are no bells to ring, the number and activity of the attendants generally rendering both processes unnecessary. If occasionally absent, the edge of a knife tapped against a wine-glass forms a fairy bell quite sufficient to summon them to their posts, although I could never divine by what auricular sympathy they recognise the chime of every table. Shortly after dinner the guests call for coffee, and betake themselves, with a valedictory bow, to their own avocations or the theatres in winter, to a promenade or a chair in some of the public gardens if it be summer. Ladies of the first respectability are habitual diners at the restaurateurs, contributing, as might be expected, to the perfect decorum of the assemblage, and even (as might not be. expected) to its silence. Surely some of these coffee-house amenities might be beneficially imported, especially the temperance, in a country where wine, instead of six or eight shillings, costs exactly that number of pence per bottle. I recommend to my countrymen that this" be in their flowing cups freshly remembered."

In the manners of France one may visibly trace the effects of the Revolution, which, by depressing the upper and elevating the lower classes, has approximated and ameliorated both, rendering the former less arrogant and the latter more independent. Aristocracy of wealth and pride of purse are now pretty much confined to England; although our brethren of America are understood to be rivalling us more successfully than could have been expected from Republicans. On the Continent we render ourselves frequently ridiculous, and sometimes odious, by our arrogant conduct to inferiors; while few of our natives return to their own country without inveighing against the familiarity of foreign servants, and the insolence of the lower classes. How scandalous, how impious of the French, and Germans, and Italians, not to bow the knee to every golden calf that is worshipped in England! If instead of their stars at the India House, and thousands in the Consols, these maltreated tourists were to be measured by their real worth, they would be safe from all imputation of hauteur towards their inferiors, for they might travel over the whole world without being able to find

any.

H.

ON THE REPASTS OF THE ANCIENTS.

Ir the Ancients excelled us in the practice of some of the sterner virtues, it must be allowed that we have in other qualifications a most decided superiority over them. One of the most striking instances of this superiority is to be found in the immense and unwearied labours and profound researches of our savans and antiquaries: owing to whose lynx-eyed sagacity and never-to-be-repulsed perseverance, we are now more intimately acquainted with the manners of the Greeks and Romans, who flourished two thousand years ago, than they were with those of their immediate neighbours and contemporaries. If an ancient Roman were now to "revisit the glimpses of the moon," how astounded with admiration would he be, while contemplating the collection of innumerable facts that have been raked together from all antiquity; and what curious and extensive information relative to his own times might he not, for the first time, learn from the writings of modern antiquaries! I have been led into this train of reflection while wandering through the Thesaurus Antiquitatum of Gronovius. This gigantic treasure, in thirteen volumes folio, contains the researches of some hundred learned men upon the ancients. What a monument of human patience and industry! What numberless days of dry discussion, and nights of lonely watching, what burning of midnight oil and baking of healthful blood, must it not have required! What an abstract love of antiquity must not the writers who have thus devoted themselves, have had! It could not have been the love of fame, for such works are not calculated to attract the generality of readers; they are never found upon the table of the man of the world, and their gigantic folio forms would fill up the petty proportions of a modern boudoir, and oust the fair blue from her own temple. The sphere of their circulation is limited to a scanty number of secluded and studious individuals, who, far from the obstreperous clamour of the world, have little to do with either giving or taking fame. But Gronovius and his thirteen folio volumes form but a small contingent of this army of erudition. There is the collection of Grævius, nearly as bulky and voluminous: there are upwards of sixty volumes published by the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, together with the numerous collections of various other academies and learned bodies. To which if we add some thousands of individual tracts and treatises by private hands, we might form a very large library, in which not one word could be found that has relation to the world for nearly the last two thousand years. But not to overwhelm my readers with this dark cloud of learning, I shall come at once to that part of Gronovius's treasure which stopped my wandering flight through this region of "chaos and old night." The subject, though an antiquated one, may not be altogether without flavour, as it relates to gastronomy, a science much relished in this age of gourmands and gourmets. It is a treatise upon the Repasts of the Ancients (de Conviviis Antiquorum) by Baccius. I am persuaded that this erudite gentleman Baccius (though I know nothing of him but from his treatise) would have played a very distinguished part at a Roman dinner; and have done so, not only as a guest, but as master of the feast, and that with no inconsiderable éclat, from his profound and classical attainments in culinary lore.

A very remarkable peculiarity in the banquets of the ancients was, their not confining the resources of the table to the gratification of one sense alone. Having exhausted their invention in the confection of stimulants for the palate, they broke new ground, and' called in another sense to their aid; and by the delicate applicationof odours and richlydistilled perfumes, these refined voluptuaries aroused the fainting appetite, and added a more exquisite and ethereal enjoyment to the grosser pleasures of the board. The gratification of the sense of smelling (a sense held with us in very undeserved neglect, probably on account of its great delicacy) was a subject of no little importance to the Romans. An attention to this delicate organ they might have learned from the East, where, from the remotest antiquity, perfumes were considered as one of the indispensable enjoyments of the higher classes of society. The very nature of the climate might have led to this; for, under the influence of a burning sun, the stomach neither requires nor can support much of heavy and substantial food, nor are its demands by any means so pressing as in colder climes. It may not be altogether fanciful to suppose that in those fiery atmospheres strong and aromatic perfumes may possess some alimentary properties, and help in some measure to allay the cravings of appetite. At all events, such a supposition is not altogether out of place in the land of Peris and birds of paradise, which latter are said, according to the beautiful superstition of the country, to live upon the ethereal breath of flowers. However this may be, it is certain that the Romans considered flowers as forming a very essential article in their festal preparations; and it is the opinion of Baccius, that at their desserts the number of flowers far exceeded that of fruits. When Nero supped in his golden house, a mingled shower of flowers and odorous essences fell upon him; and one of Heliogabalus's recreations was to smother his courtiers with flowers, of whom it may be said, "They died of a rose in aromatic pain." Nor was it entirely as an object of luxury that the ancients made use of flowers; they were considered to possess sanative and medicinal qualities. According to Pliny, Athenæus, and Plutarch, certain herbs and flowers were of sovereign power to prevent the approaches of ebriety, and to facilitate, or, as Baccius less clearly expresses it, clarify, the functions of the brain. Amongst these disintoxicating flowers are enumerated, by the forementioned authors, the rose, the violet, the saffron flower, the myrtle, the parsley, and the ivy. I merely transcribe the names, without vouching for the virtues of these remedies. However, Plutarch has endeavoured by a long and elaborate ratiocination to shew how the exhalations of certain plants and flowers may facilitate the functions of the brain, and neutralize the usual inebriating qualities of wine. If the fact be as the worthy Cheronean has it, it may not be without its use at certain modern merry meetings. Hippocrates was also of opinion that floral exhalations are extremely salutary. I am not aware that modern experimentalists have given this subject all the attention that it deserves; and yet it is one of some importance: for if, as we are told, the brain be the seat of the soul, it behoves us to make use of every means that may render its sojourn there commodious, and keep it from the intrusion of such unwelcome visitors as vinous fumes and alcoholic vapours. If the functions of the brain are to be facilitated, and its troubles, written or unwritten, to be razed out by such gentle and agreeable agents as the delicate breath of