Temple.

resembling (but without his sourness) that write down edge bone of beef in his bill of 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. He 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, Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled? 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; gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why make the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who to an inch. Where he learned this figure, made up to me to my childish eyes—the or what occasioned it, I could never discover. mythology of the Temple? In those days I It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed saw Gods, as "old men covered with a to answer the purpose any better than com- mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the mon walking. The extreme tenuity of his dreams of classic idolatry perish,-extinct be frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary trial of poising. Twopeny would often rally fabling, in the heart of childhood there will, him upon his leanness, and hail him as Bro- for ever, spring up a well of innocent or ther Lusty; but W. had no relish of a joke. His wholesome superstition-the seeds of exagfeatures were spiteful. I have heard that he geration will be busy there, and vital-from would pinch his cat's ears extremely when every-day forms educing the unknown and anything had offended him. Jackson-the the uncommon. In that little Goshen there omniscient Jackson he was called-was of will be light when the grown world flounders this period. He had the reputation of pos-about in the darkness of sense and matesessing 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

riality. 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 sof

shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to their existence beyond the Gentleman's—hiz 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 childbed, 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 infir what a new light does this place his rejection mities overtake him-he is yet in green and (O 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 cha- So may the Winged Horse, your ancient racter! Henceforth let no one receive the badge and cognisance, still flourish! so may narratives of Elia for true records! They future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your are, in truth, but shadows of fact—verisimi- church and chambers! so may the sparrows, litudes, not verities—or sitting but upon the in default of more melodious quiristers, unremote edges and outskirts of history. He poisoned hop about your walks; so may the is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, would have done better perhaps to have con- who, by leave, airs her playful charge in sulted that gentleman before he sent these your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushincondite reminiscences to press. But the ing curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juvenesworthy sub-treasurer-who respects his old cent emotion! so may the younkers of this and his new masters-would but have been generation eye you, pacing your stately terpuzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. race, with the same superstitious veneration The good man wots not, peradventure, of the with which the child Elia gazed on the licence which Magazines have arrived at in Old Worthies that solemnised the parade this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of 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 moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or 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.

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

a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts—a grace beforeTM 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.

Again the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating; when he shall confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus hospes) at rich men's tables, with the savoury soup and messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt the introduction of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put out the gentle flame of devotion. The incense which rises round is pagan, and the bellygod intercepts it for his own. The very excess of the provision beyond the needs, 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.

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 hogs 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 delicacies for which east and west are ransacked, I would have them postpone their benediction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid; when the still small voice can be heard, and the reason of the grace returns— with temperate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of Celæno anything but a blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude: but the proper object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes; daily bread, not delicacies; the means of life, and not the means of pampering the carcass. With what frame or composure, I wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at some great Hall-feast, when he knows that his last concluding pious word—and that in all probability, the sacred name which he preaches-is but the signal for so many impatient harpies to commence their foul 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.

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously perhaps, by the good man The severest satire upon full tables and who says the grace. I have seen it in clergy-surfeits is the banquet which Satan, in the men and others—a sort of shame-a sense of "Paradise Regained," provides for a temptathe co-presence of circumstances which un- 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.

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 The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these their business of every description with more cates would go down without the recom- calmness than we, have more title to the use mendatory preface of a benediction. They of these benedictory prefaces. I have always are like to be short graces where the devil admired their silent grace, and the more plays the host. I am afraid the poet wants because I have observed their applications his usual decorum in this place. Was he to the meat and drink following to be less thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a passionate and sensual than ours. They are gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a tempta- neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. tion fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, banquet is too civic and culinary, and the with indifference, calmness, and cleanly ciraccompaniments altogether a profanation of cumstances. They neither grease nor slop that deep, abstracted holy scene. The mighty themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice. 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

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. Ishrink 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?

he made answer that it was not a custom known in his church: in which courteous evasion the other acquiescing for good manners' sake, or in compliance with a weak brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian have painted two priests, of his religion, playing into each other's hands the compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice,—the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the two flamens, and (as between two stools) going away in the end without his supper.

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 hand to some great fish-his Dagon-with a special consecration of no ark but the fat tureen before him. Graces are the sweet preluding strains to the banquets of angels and children; to the roots and severer repasts of the Chartreuse; to the slender, but not slenderly acknowledged, refection of the poor and humble man: but at the heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious they become of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than the noise of those better befitting organs would be which children hear tales of, at 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

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 benefits 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.