explanations have ever been attempted; one was that he never so much heard as overheard; though not a willing listener, he was an eavesdropper: and while he hung upon the outskirts of a gathering of men, he would carry away more of the conversation than any one of the company. Another account was that many of the incidents which he related were of his own manufacture. No occurrence ever mortified him more, than when Gleig, the Scotch stone-cutter, his next door neighbour, absconded during the night, leaving Sandy in the vocative with regard to the rent of a little yard in which he worked at his tomb-stone. He could not pretend that it had been done with his privity, because he had been cozened: he would not confess ignorance, because he would thus lose the chief plume in his cap. For several days he was missing from the village, and always spoke of the event as very mysterious. It is remarkable that in almost every place, there are some men who seem to have no means of support, and who live along for years together, without suspicion of actual dishonesty, and without falling into the clutches of the law. If Sandy Thorp ever had a trade, nobody could tell what it was. He owned a little shop separate from his house, but no work was ever done in it, and when any one was allowed to peep into it there seemed to be nothing in it but old iron, scattered tools, and refuse furniture and harness. In earlier life Sandy picked up a dollar now and then, by going to the beach for a wagon load of fish, or by filling an ice-house, or in the spring of the year by bringing in choice forest trees for planting in pleasuregrounds. But his main employment was that of a veterinary surgeon, or, more vulgarly, a horse doctor. Whether this science comes by inspiration, or whether he was a seventh son, I know not, but he took it up, as most do, without any regular diploma. Like all loungers about taverndoors, he was much engaged in passing judgment on all the horses of the neighbourhood. You might see him, almost daily, feeling the legs, or prying into the mouths of the hacks in the stableyard and, let me not fail to say, it is an employment in which he has not left us without successors. I distinctly remember the air with which he would handle a fleam, or perform the operation of mashing upon a choked cow. Such performances are sure to collect a little knot of men, and this was just what Sandy gloried in. Here he could repeat the freshest news, and give his decision upon affairs of state with an air of judicial complacency. Sandy was little versed in books. He always knew, however, what sign the sun was in, and whether the heavens were favourable for planting, or for killing porkers. He was weather-wise, keeping the breast-bone of a goose, by way of teraphim. No one ever saw him in church, except at funerals, on which occasion he was in some sort a brevet undertaker; he would point out the way for the bearers, and determined whether the grave was wide enough. At vendues, he was scarcely ever known to bid, but he advised in a knowing way. Of money he had little concern; the instinct of beggars always led them to pass him by. By long continued street-walking, he had reduced his frame to a wiry fibre; and as he was tall, erect, and always thinly clad, his appearance was striking. I ought to add that he was never shabby. His apparel though very old was always in repair, the patches and darns being done with a neatness which made some suspect he had been a tailor. It was observed that when he had worn a hat for several years, and exhaus.ed the powers of brushing and ironing, he used to put crape upon it: in such cases, it always happened, that he had recently lost a cousin in the Lake country." As long as he had hair, he powdered it; then he used to powder his bare crown, until this genteel appliance became obsolete. There was always, on the cuff of his left sleeve, a row of pins, inserted with geometrical parallelism. When he talked, he was in the habit of whittling a stick, so that his track was often marked by little piles of shavings. His likeness was never taken, nor could it have been; for when he was not talking, he did not look like himself. 66 XXV. PLEASURES OF THE TABLE. "Alas! how simple, to these cates compared, MILTON. IT is the grand endeavour of all philosophy and all religion to elevate the immortal part of man; to subdue and regulate that which he has in common with the brute, and thus to refine and expand his nature. But there is a latent sensuality in our race which is perpetually thwarting this pious effort; and as there are no men without appetites, and few men without lusts, he who flatters that within us which is animal, gains a willing votary, and often beguiles us in spite of our reason. The fine arts, occupying a field intermediate between the region of sense and that of intellect, have on this very account been often prostituted. Painting, sculpture, and especially music, have pandered to the unworthy principle, and poetry and other kindred parts of literature have been made to do homage to sense. All this shows a sad inversion of human nature. It is not that we have senses, that we have appetites, that we have desires, that we have passions, but it is that we serve them, that we are betrayed by them, that they become our idols. Eden, the dwelling of pure heaven-like creatures, was a garden of sense; its fruits were material, its sights and sounds addressed bodily organs; its paths were trodden by creatures of flesh and blood. Let us not curse the harmless matter, or the indifferent sense; but let us fear their abuse, in the present decrepit condition of humanity. Drunkenness has had its poetry. Nay, start not-some of the most stirring effusions of the age have been written by men whose "fine frenzy" was a sort of Dutch courage: Byron declared the true Hippocrene to be gin and water. The festivities of the table have been accompanied with music and song, in all ages. Now I plead for the festivities, in every virtuous sense, and I plead for the song; but in the name of injured human nature I cry out against the intoxication. Look back to early ages, and you see Bacchus presiding over the poets. Anacreon was the darling glee-maker for the old wine-bibbers. Horace was little behind him among the Romans. In our day half the ballads remaining in our own language turn upon drinking and drunkenness; and many a noble traditionary air is linked to the devil's own litany, as in Cauld Kale in Aberdeen: "For I maun hae my cogie, sirs, I canna want my cogie; |