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resembling (but without his sourness) that write down edge bone of beef in his bill of

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of our great philanthropist. I know that he commons. He was supposed to know, if any did good acts, but I could never make out man in the world did. He decided the orthowhat he was. Contemporary with these, graphy to be as I have given it- fortibut subordinate, was Daines Barrington-fying his authority with such anatomical another oddity he walked burly and square reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the -in imitation, I think, of Coventry-how- time) learned and happy. Some do spell it beit he attained not to the dignity of his yet, perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, resemblance between its shape and that of upon the strength of being a tolerable anti- the aspirate so denominated. I had almost quarian, and having a brother a bishop. forgotten Mingay with the iron hand — but When the account of his year's treasurership he was somewhat later. He had lost his came to be audited, the following singular right hand by some accident, and supplied it charge was unanimously disallowed by the with a grappling-hook, which he wielded bench: "Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gar- with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the dener, twenty shillings for stuff to poison the substitute before I was old enough to reason sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was whether it were artificial or not. I rememold Barton- a jolly negation, who took upon ber the astonishment it raised in me. him the ordering of the bills of fare for the was a blustering, loud-talking person; and I parliament chamber, where the benchers reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as dine-answering to the combination rooms an emblem of power somewhat like the at College - much to the easement of his less horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's epicurean brethren. I know nothing more Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or did of him. Then Read, and Twopeny-Read, till very lately) in the costume of the reign good-humoured and personable - Twopeny, of George the Second, closes my imperfect good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous in recollections of the old benchers of the Inner jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Temple. Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many Fantastic forms, whither are ye filed? Or, must remember him (for he was rather of if the like of you exist, why exist they no later date) and his singular gait, which was more for me? Ye inexplicable, half-underperformed by three steps and a jump regu- stood appearances, why comes in reason to larly succeeding. The steps were little tear away the preternatural mist, bright or efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk; the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose any better than common walking. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopeny would often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but W. had no relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely when anything had offended him. Jackson the omniscient Jackson he was called-was of this period. He had the reputation of possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage of the cook applying to him, with much formality of apology, for instructions how to

gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to me to my childish eyes—the mythology of the Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as "old men covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish,-extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, in the heart of childhood there will, for ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition - the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital — from every-day forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that little Goshen there will be light when the grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth.

P.S.-I have done injustice to the soft

shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to their existence beyond the Gentleman's-his trust to imperfect memory, and the erring furthest monthly excursions in this nature notices of childhood! Yet I protest I always having been long confined to the holy ground thought that he had been a bachelor! This of honest Urban's obituary. May it be long gentleman, R. N. informs me, married young, before his own name shall help to swell those and losing his lady in childhood, within the columns of unenvied flattery! - Meantime, first year of their union, fell into a deep O ye New Benchers of the Inner Temple, melancholy, from the effects of which, pro- cherish him kindly, for he is himself the bably, he never thoroughly recovered. In kindliest of human creatures. Should infirwhat a new light does this place his rejection mities overtake him- he is yet in green and (0 call it by a gentler name!) of mild Susan vigorous senility-make allowances for them, P--, unravelling into beauty certain pecu- remembering that "ye yourselves are old." liarities of this very shy and retiring character! Henceforth let no one receive the narratives of Elia for true records! They are, in truth, but shadows of fact- verisimilitudes, not verities-or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and would have done better perhaps to have consulted that gentleman before he sent these incondite reminiscences to press. But the worthy sub-treasurer-who respects his old and his new masters-would but have been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not, peradventure, of the licence which Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of

So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cognisance, still flourish! so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and chambers! so may the sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks; so may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtesy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion! so may the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnised the parade before ye!

GRACE BEFORE MEAT.

THE custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full meal was something more than a common blessing! when a belly-full was a wind-fall, and looked like a special providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of foodthe act of eating - should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of existence.

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I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts-a grace before Milton- a grace before Shakspeare-a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen ?-but the received ritual having prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall confine my observations to the experience which I have had of the grace, properly so called; commending my new scheme for extension to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug con

gregation of Utopian Rabelæsian Christians, hallow the blessing. After a devotional tone no matter where assembled.

The form, then, of the benediction before eating has its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and unprovocative repast of children. It is here that the grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into whose minds the conception of wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The proper end of food—the animal sustenance—is barely contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are perennial.

put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker will fall into his common voice! helping himself or his neighbour, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite, or was not most conscientious in the discharge of the duty; but he felt in his inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and the viands before him with the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.

I hear somebody exclaim,-Would you have Christians sit down at table, like hoge to their troughs, without remembering the Giver?-no-I would have them sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, and they must pamper themselves with Again the plainest diet seems the fittest to delicacies for which east and west are ranbe preceded by the grace. That which is sacked, I would have them postpone their least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind benediction to a fitter season, when appetite most free for foreign considerations. A man is laid; when the still small voice can be may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a heard, and the reason of the grace returns — dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have with temperate diet and restricted dishes. leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occainstitution of eating; when he shall confess sions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurum a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil purposes of the grace, at the presence of knew the harpy-nature better, when he put venison or turtle. When I have sate (a into the mouth of Celano anything but a rarus hospes) at rich men's tables, with the blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of savoury soup and messes steaming up the the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests others, though that is a meaner and inferior with desire and a distracted choice, I have gratitude: but the proper object of the grace felt the introduction of that ceremony to be is sustenance, not relishes; daily bread, not unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm delicacies; the means of life, and not the upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose means of pampering the carcass. With what a religious sentiment. It is a confusion of frame or composure, I wonder, can a city purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth chaplain pronounce his benediction at some that waters. The heats of epicurism put out great Hall-feast, when he knows that his the gentle flame of devotion. The incense last concluding pious word—and that in all which rises round is pagan, and the belly- probability, the sacred name which he god intercepts it for his own. The very preaches-is but the signal for so many excess of the provision beyond the needs, impatient harpies to commence their foul takes away all sense of proportion between the end and means. The giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice of returning thanks-for what?-for having too much, while so many starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss.

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have seen it in clergymen and others-a sort of shame-a sense of the co-presence of circumstances which un

orgies, with as little sense of true thankfulness (which is temperance) as those Virgilian fowl! It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice.

The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the banquet which Satan, in the "Paradise Regained," provides for a tempta tion in the wilderness:

A table richly spread in regal mode

With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Gris-amber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore,
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.

The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would go down without the recommendatory preface of a benediction. They are like to be short graces where the devil plays the host.—I am afraid the poet wants his usual decorum in this place. Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole banquet is too civic and culinary, and the accompaniments altogether a profanation of that deep, abstracted holy scene. The mighty artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of proportion to the simple wants and plain hunger of the guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, from his dreams might have been taught better. To the temperate fantasies of the famished Son of God, what sort of feasts presented themselves?—He dreamed indeed,

As appetite is wont to dream,

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet.
But what meats? -

Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn;
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they
brought;

He saw the prophet also how he fled
Into the desert and how there he slept

Under a juniper; then how awaked

and continuing the species. They are fit blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming gratitude; but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The Quakers, who go about their business of every description with more calmness than we, have more title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have always admired their silent grace, and the more because I have observed their applications to the meat and drink following to be less passionate and sensual than ours. They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indifference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither grease nor slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice.

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer's flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively from one who professes to like minced veal. There is a physiognomical character in the tastes for food. C holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is right. With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under culinary disappointments, as to come home at the dinner hour, for instance, expecting some savoury mess, and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill melted-that commonest of kitchen failures-puts me beside my tenor.- The author of the Rambler used to make inarticulate animal noises over a favourite food. Was this the music quite proper to be preceded by the grace? or would the pious man have Theoretically I am no enemy to graces; done better to postpone his devotions to a but practically I own that (before meat season when the blessing might be contemespecially) they seem to involve something plated with less perturbation? I quarrel awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin of one or another kind, are excellent spurs face against those excellent things, in their to our reason, which might otherwise but way, jollity and feasting. But as these feebly set about the great ends of preserving exercises, however laudable, have little in

He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
And ate the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than
these temperate dreams of the divine
Hungerer. To which of these two visionary
banquets, think you, would the introduction
of what is called the grace have been the
most fitting and pertinent?

them of grace or gracefulness, a man should this meal also. His reverend brother did be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, not at first quite apprehend him, but upon that while he is pretending his devotions an explanation, with little less importance otherwhere, he is not secretly kissing his he made answer that it was not a custom hand to some great fish—his Dagon-with a known in his church: in which courteous special consecration of no ark but the fat evasion the other acquiescing for good mantureen before him. Graces are the sweet ners' sake, or in compliance with a weak preluding strains to the banquets of angels brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was and children; to the roots and severer repasts waived altogether. With what spirit might of the Chartreuse; to the slender, but not not Lucian have painted two priests, of his slenderly acknowledged, refection of the poor religion, playing into each other's hands the and humble man: but at the heaped-up compliment of performing or omitting a boards of the pampered and the luxurious sacrifice, the hungry God meantime, doubtthey become of dissonant mood, less timed ful of his incense, with expectant nostrils and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than hovering over the two flamens, and (as bethe noise of those better befitting organs tween two stools) going away in the end would be which children hear tales of, at without his supper. Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too curious in the study of them, or too disordered in our application to them, or engross too great a portion of those good things (which should be common) to our share, to be able with any grace to say grace. To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion, is to add hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of this truth is what makes the performance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at most tables. In houses where the grace is as indispensable as the napkin, who has not seen that never-settled question arise, as to who shall say it? while the good man of the house and the visitor clergyman, or some other guest belike of next authority, from years or gravity, shall be bandying about the office between them as a matter of compliment, each of them not unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an equivocal duty from his own shoulders?

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist divines of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to introduce to each other for the first time that evening. Before the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to say anything. It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before

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A short form upon these occasions is felt to want reverence; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of impertinence. I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic conciseness with which that equivocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L., when importuned for a grace, used to inquire, first slyly leering down the table, Is there no clergyman here," significantly adding, "Thank G-." Nor do I think our old form at school quite pertinent, where we were used to preface our bald bread-and-cheesesuppers with a preamble, connecting with that humble blessing a recognition of bene fits the most awful and overwhelming to the imagination which religion has to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus. I remember we were put to it to reconcile the phrase “good creatures," upon which the blessing rested, with the fare set before us, wilfully understanding that expression in a low and animal sense,till some one recalled a legend, which told how, in the golden days of Christ's, the young Hospitallers were wont to have smoking joints of roast meat upon their nightly boards, till some pious benefactor, commiserating the decencies, rather than the palates, of the children, commuted our flesh for garments, and gave us—horresco referens — trou sers instead of mutton.

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