"BLEST as the immortal Gods is he," the youth, who, without the effort of using his own limbs, protected from the earth beneath and the skies above, is rapidly whirled in a close carriage to the ever open and hospitable door of a good tavern. Before the footman or coachman can descend, for the jaunty swing of the private chariot or the rattling jolt of a hackney-coach are welcomed with equal deference, half a dozen waiters rush from the house, the steps are lowered with all the celerity that is consistent with the prevention of noise, elbows are respectfully tendered to the descending visitant, a bowing procession ushers him into the spacious illuminated refectory, and the lady at the bar bows to him as he passes with a smile, that, while it preserves the dignity due to her presiding station, seems to say-" Thrice welcome to all that my house contains!-the longer you stay, the more you revel, the greater your waste and devastation, the more acceptable will be your august presence." Her's are not the complimentary hyperboles of the Persian, who goes to the outskirts of the city and exclaims to every traveller-"Deign to accept of Shiraz and all its dependencies!"-No; her heart does not belie her looks; were she in Madame de Genlis's Palace of Truth, she would not alter a phrase, nor unbend a single smile. Amid a world of deceit, her benign looks are bent upon her new inmate with an absolute integrity of sincerity; nor are her numerous servants less cordial, emulous, and reverent. Is it winter, the guest's great coat and hat are taken from him, and cautiously suspended; one excites the fire into a cheerful and blazing recognition of his presence, while another spreads a skreen before the door, that "the airs of heaven may not visit him too roughly." Is it summer, the blinds are pulled down that he may be sheltered from the sun, and the window thrown open that he may be fanned by the cooling breezes, while a paper is placed before him containing the very latest news from each extremity of the earth, to prepare which for his morning perusal, many fellow-creatures of great technical skill, and some of intellectual eminence, have been sleepless all night. By the side of this record submitting the events of the wide world to his perusal, is placed the bill of fare, tendering the productions of the universe to his palate. The four elements, the four seasons, the four quarters of the earth are ransacked and laid under contribution for his instant gratification. The wishes of Cinderella, however wild and extravagant, were not more promptly realized; the cap of Fortunatus and the wand of Harlequin are less magical than his enchanted finger. He points, and the depths of the sea yield him up their tenants; the air surrenders its feathered rarities; earth pours out its cornucopia at his feet; and fire, like a ministering spirit, waits to receive his orders for their concoction. Mankind seems to be at his disposal not less than the animal and vegetable world. How many weary months have the crew of an East Indiaman been shut out from the sight of land, how many storms have they encountered, to bring home that pickle of which he swallows a

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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.

If 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 Bac

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 éciat, from his profound and classical attainments in culinary lore.