is a poor man, born to look upwards to his fellow-men - and not to look down upon any body but slaves. He goes, therefore, to the palace of some grandee, some top-sawyer of the Se. natorian order. This great man, for all his greatness, has turned out even sooner than himself. For he also has had no candles and no cigars; and he well knows, that before the sun looks into his portals, all his halls will be overflowing and buzzing with the matin susurrus of courtiers - the "mane salutantes." It is as much as his popularity is worth to absent himself, or to keep people waiting. But surely, the reader may think, this poor man he might keep waiting. No, he might not; for, though poor, being a citizen, he is a gentleman. That was the consequence of keeping slaves. Wherever there is a class of slaves, he that enjoys the jus suffragii (no matter how poor) is a gentleman. The true Latin word for a gentleman is ingenuus a freeman and the son of

a freeman.

Yet even here there were distinctions. Under the Emperors, the courtiers were divided into two classes; with respect to the superior class, it was said of the sovereign-that he saw them, (videbat:) with respect to the other that he was seen, (" videbatur.") Even Plutarch mentions it as a common boast in his times, ἡμας ειδεν ὁ βασιλευς – Cæsar is in the habit of seeing me; or, as a common plea forevading a suit, ἑτερες δρα μαλλον-Iam sorry to say he is more inclined to look upon others. And this usage derived itself (mark that well!) from the republican era. The aulic spirit was propagatedby the Empire, but from a republican root. Having paid his court, you will suppose that our friend comes home to breakfast. Not at all: no such discovery as "breakfast" had then been made: breakfast was not invented for many centuries after that. We

have always admired, and always shall admire, as the very best of all human stories, Charles Lamb's account of the origin of roast pig in China. Ching

Ping, it seems, had suffered his father's house to be burned down: the outhouses were burned along with the house: and in one of these the pigs by accident were roasted to a turn. Memorable were the results for all future China and future civilisation. Ping, who (like all China beside) had hitherto eaten his pig raw, now for the first time tasted it in a state of torrefaction. Of course he made his peace with his father by a part (tradition says a leg) of the new dish. The father was so astounded with the discovery, that he burned his house down once a-year for the sake of coming at an annual banquet of roast pig. A curious prying sort of fellow, one Chang Pang, got to know of this. He also burned down a house with a pig in it, and had his eyes opened. The secret was ill kept. The discovery spread. Many great conversions were made. Houses were blazing in every part of the Celestial Empire. The insurance offices took the matter up. One Chong Pong, detected in the very act of shutting up a pig in his drawingroom, om, and then firing a train, was indicted on a charge of arson. chief-justice of Pekin, on that occasion, requested an officer of the court to hand him a piece of the roast pig, the corpus delicti; for pure curiosity led him to taste: but within two days after it was observed that his lordship's town-house was burned down. In short, all China apostatized to the new faith; and it was not until some centuries had passed, that a great genius arose, who established the second era in the history of roast pig, by showing that it could be had without burning down a house.

The

No such genius had yet arisen in Rome. Breakfast was not suspected. No prophecy, no type of breakfast had been published. In fact, it took as much time and research to arrive at that great discovery as at the Copernican system. True it is, reader, that you have heard of such a word as jentaculum; and your dictionary translates that old heathen word by the Chris

tian word breakfust. But dictionaries, one and all, are dull deceivers. Between jentaculum and breakfast the differences are as wide as between a horse-chestnut and chestnut horse; differences in the time when, in the place where, in the manner how, but pre-eminently in the thing which.

Galen is a good authority upon such a subject, since if (like other Pagans) he ate no breakfast himself, in some sense he may be called the cause of breakfast to other men, by treating of those things which could safely be taken upon an empty stomach. As to the time, he (like many other authors) says, περι τρίτην, η (το μακροτερον) περι τετάρτην, about the third, or at farthest about the fourth hour: and so exact is he, that he assumes the day to lie exactly between six and six o'clock, and to be divided into thirteen equal portions. So the time will be a few minutes before nine, or a few minutes before ten, in the forenoon. That seems fair enough. But it is not time in respect to its location that we are so much concerned with, as time in respect to its duration. Now, heaps of authorities take it for granted, that you are not to sit down: you are to stand: and as to the place, that any place place will do: "any corner of the forum," says Galen, " any corner that you fancy:" which is like referring a man for his salle à manger to West. minster Hall or Fleet Street. Augustus, in a letter still surviving, tells us that he jentabat, or took his jentaculum in his carriage; now in a wheel car. riage, (in essedo,) now in a litter or palanquin (in lectica.) This careless and disorderly way as to time and place, and other circumstances of haste, sufficiently indicate the quality of the meal you are to expect. Already you are "sagacious of your quarry from so far." Not that we would presume, excellent reader, to liken you to Death, or to insinuate that you are "a grim feature." But would it not make a saint "grim" to hear of such preparations for the morning meal? And then to hear of such consummations as panis siccus, dry bread; or, (if the learned reader thinks it will taste better in Greek,) αρτος ξηρος ! And what

may this word dry happen to mean? "Does it mean stale bread?" says Salmasius. " Shall we suppose," says he, in querulous words, "molli et recenti opponi," and from that antithesis conclude it to be, "durum et non recens coctum, eoque sicciorem?" Hard and stale, and for that reason the more arid! Not quite so bad as that, we hope. Or again-" siccum pro biscocto, ut hodie vocamus, sumemus?"* By hodie Salmasius means, amongst his countrymen of France, where biscoctus is verbatim reproduced in the word bis (twice) cuit, (baked ;) whence our own biscuit. Biscuit might do very well, could we be sure that it was cabin biscuit: but Salmasius argues that in this case he takes it to mean "buccellatum, qui est panis nauticus;" that is, the ship company's biscuit, broken with a sledge-hammer. In Greek, for the benefit again of the learned reader, it is termed διπυρος, indicating that it has passed twice under the action of fire.

"Well," you say, "no matter if it had passed fifty times and through the fires of Moloch; only let us have this biscuit such as it is." In good faith, then, fasting reader, you are not likely to see much more than you have seen. It is a very Barmecide feast, we do assure you-this same "jentaculum;" at which abstinence and patience are much more exercised than the teeth; faith and hope are the chief graces cultivated; together with that species of the magnificum which is founded on the ignotum. Even this biscuit was allowed in the most limited quantities: for which reason it is that the Greeks called this apology for a meal by the name of βεκκισμος, a word formed (as many words were in the Post-Augustan ages) from a Latin word-viz., buccea, a mouthful; not literally such, but so much as a polished man could allow himself to put into his mouth at once. took a mouthful," says Sir William Waller, the Parliamentary general, "took a mouthful; paid our reckoning; mounted; and were off." But there Sir William means, by his plausible "mouthful," something very much beyond either nine or nine

"We

teen ordinary quantities of that deno. mination, whereas the Roman "jentaculum" was literally such; and, accordingly, one of the varieties under which the ancient vocabularies express this model of evanescent quantities is gustatio, a mere tasting; and again it is called by another variety, gustus, a mere taste: (whence by the usual suppression of the s, comes the French word for a collation or luncheon, viz. gouter.] Speaking of his uncle, Pliny the Younger says" Post solem ple. rumque lavabatur: deinde gustabat; dormiebat minimum; mox, quasi alio die, studebat in cœnæ tempus." "After taking the air he bathed; after that he broke his fast on a bit of biscuit, and took a very slight siesta: which done, as if awaking to a new day, he set in regularly to his studies, and pursued them to dinner-time." Gustabat here meant that nondescript meal which arose at Rome when jentaculum and prandium were fused into one, and that only a taste or mouthful of biscuit, as we shall show farther on.

Possibly, however, most excellent reader, like some epicurean traveller, who, in crossing the Alps, finds himself weather-bound at St Bernard's on Ash- Wednesday, you surmise a remedy: you descry some opening from "the loopholes of retreat," through which a few delicacies might be insinuated to spread verdure on this arid desert of biscuit. Casuistry can do much. A dead hand at casuistry has often proved more than a match for Lent with all his quarantines. But sorry we are to say that, in this case, no relief is hinted at in any ancient author. A grape or two, (not a bunch of grapes,) a raisin or two, a date, an olive-these are the whole amount of relief* which the chancery of the Roman kitchen granted in such cases. All things here hang together, and prove each other; the time, the place, the mode, the thing. Well might man eat standing, or eat in public, such a trifle as this. Go home to such a breakfast as this! You would as soon think of ordering a cloth to be laid in order to eat a peach, or of asking a

friend to join you in an orange. No man makes "two bites of a cherry." So let us pass on to the other stages of the day. Only in taking leave of this morning stage, throw your eyes back with us, Christian reader, upon this truly heathen meal, fit for idolatrous dogs like your Greeks and your Romans; survey through the vista of ages, that thrice-cursed biscuit, with half a fig, perhaps, by way of garnish, and a huge hammer by its side, to secure the certainty of mastication, by previous comminution. Then turn your eyes to a Christian breakfasthot rolls, eggs, coffee, beef; but down, down, rebellious visions: we need say no more! You, reader, like ourselves, will breathe a malediction on the classical era, and thank your stars for making you a Romanticist. Every morning we thank ours for keeping us back, and reserving us to an age in which breakfast had been already invented. In the words of Ovid we say :

"Prisca juvent alios: ego me nunc denique Gratulor. Hæc ætas moribus apta meis."

natum

Our friend, the Roman cit, has therefore thus far, in his progress through life, obtained no breakfast, if he ever contemplated an idea so frantic. But it occurs to you, our faithful reader, that perhaps he will not always be thus unhappy. We could bring waggon-loads of sentiments, Greek as well as Roman, which prove, more clearly than the most eminent pikestaff, that, as the wheel of fortune revolves, simply out of the fact that it has carried a man downwards, it must subsequently carry him upwards, no matter what dislike that wheel, or any of its spokes, may bear to that man: "non, si male nunc sit, et olim sic erit:" and that if a man, through the madness of his nation, misses coffee and hot rolls at nine, he may easily run into a leg of mutton at twelve. True it is he may do so: truth is commendable: and we will not deny that a man may sometimes, by losing a breakfast, gain a dinner. Such things have been in various ages, and will be again, but not at Rome. There are reasons against it. We have heard of men who consider life under the idea of a wilderness-dry as "a remainder biscuit after a voyage:" and who consider a day under the idea of a little life. Life is the macrocosm, or world at large: day is the microcosm, or world in miniature. Consequently, if life is a wilderness, then day, as a little life, is a little wilderness. And this wilderness can be safely traversed only by having relays of fountains, or stages for refreshment. Such stages, they conceive, are found in the several meals which Providence has stationed at due intervals through the day, whenever the perverseness of man does not break the chain, or derange the order of succession.

These are the anchors by which man rides in that billowy ocean between morning and night. The first anchor, viz. breakfast, having given way in Rome, the more need there is that he should pull up by the second; and that is often reputed to be dinner. And as your dictionary, good reader, translated breakfast by that vain word jentaculum, so, doubtless, it will translate dinner by that still vainer word prandium. Sincerely we hope that your own dinner on this day, and through all time coming, may have a better root in fact and substance than this most visionary of all baseless thingsthe Roman prandium, of which we shall presently show you that the most approved translation is moonshine.

Reader, we are not jesting here. In the very spirit of serious truth, we assure you, that the delusion about "jentaculum" is even exceeded by this other delusion about "prandium." Salmasius himself, for whom a natural prejudice of place and time partially obscured the truth, admits, however, that prandium was a meal which the ancients rarely took; his very words are" raro prandebantveteres." Now, judge for yourself of the good sense which is shown in translating by the word dinner, which must of necessity mean the chief meal-a Roman word which represents a fancy meal, a meal of caprice, a meal which few people took. At this moment, what is the single point of agreement between the noon meal of the English labourer and the evening meal of the English gentle

In

man? What is the single circumstance common to both which causes us to denominate them by the common name of dinner? It is that in both we recognise the principal meal of the day, the meal upon which is thrown the onus of the day's support. every thing else they are as wide asunder as the poles; but they agree in this one point of their function. Is it credible that, to represent such a meal amongst ourselves, we select a Roman word so notoriously expressing a mere shadow, a pure apology, that very few people ever tasted it-nobody sate down to it-not many washed their hands after it, and gradually the very name of it became interchangeable with another name, implying the slightest possible act of trying or sipping? "Post lavationem sine mensâ prandium," says Seneca, "post quod non sunt lavandæ manus ; that is, "after bathing, I take a prandium without sitting down to table, and such a prandium as brings after itself no need of washing the hands." No; moonshine as little soils the hands as it oppresses the stomach.

Reader! we, as well as Pliny, had an uncle, an East Indian uncle; doubtless you have such an uncle; every body has an Indian uncle. Generally such a person is " rather yellow, rather yellow," [to quote Canning versus Lord Durham:) that is the chief fault with his physics; but, as to his morals, he is universally a man of princely aspirations and habits. He is not always so orientally rich as he is reputed; but he is always orientally munificent. Call upon him at any hour from two to five, he insists on your taking tiffin: and such a tiffin! The English corresponding term is luncheon: but how meagre a shadow is the European meal to its glowing Asiatic cousin! Still, gloriously as tiffin shines, does any body imagine that it is a vicarious dinner, or ever meant to be the substitute of dinner? Wait till eight, and you will have your eyes opened on that subject. So of the Roman prandium: had it been as luxurious as it was simple, still it was always viewed as something meant only to stay the stomach, as a prologue to something beyond. The prandium was far enough from giving the feeblest idea of the English luncheon; yet it stood in the same relation to the Roman day. Now to Englishmen that meal scarcely exists; and were it not for women, whose delicacy of organization does not allow them to fast so long as men, would probably be abolished. It is singular in this, as in other points, how nearly England and ancient Rome approximate. We all know how hard it is to tempt a man generally into spoiling his appetite, by eating before dinner. The same dislike of violating what they called the integrity of the appetite, [integram famem,] existed at Rome. Every man who knows any thing of Latin critically, sees the connexion of the word integer with in and tetigi: integer means what is intact, unviolated by touch. Cicero, when protesting against spoiling his appetite for dinner, by tasting any thing beforehand, says, integram famem ad cænam afferam; I shall bring to dinner an appetite untampered with. Nay, so much stress did the Romans lay on maintaining this primitive state of the appetite undisturbed, that any prelusions with either jentaculum or prandium were said, by a very strong phrase indeed, polluere famem, to pollute the sanctity of the appetite. The appetite was regarded as a holy vestal flame, soaring upwards towards dinner throughout the day: if undebauched, it tended to its natural consummation in cana: expired like a phœnix, to rise again out of its own ashes. On this theory, to which language had accommodated itself, the two prelusive meals of nine o'clocka.M., and of one P. M., so far from being ratified by the public sense, and adopted into the economy of the day, were regarded gloomily as gross irregularities, enormities, debauchers of the natural instinct; and, in so far as they thwarted that instinct, lessened it, or depraved it, were universally held to be full of pollution; and, finally, to profane a motion of nature. Such was the language.

But we guess what is passing in the reader's mind. He thinks that all this proves the prandium to have been a meal of little account; and in very many cases absolutely unknown. But still he

thinks all this might happen to the English dinner that might be neglected; supper might be generally preferred; and, nevertheless, dinner would be as truly entitled to the name of dinner as before. Many a student neglects his dinner; enthusiasm in any pursuit must often have ex. tinguished appetite for all of us. Many a time and oft did this happen to Sir Isaac Newton. Evidence is on record, that such a deponent at eight o'clock A.M., found Sir Isaac with one stocking on, one off; at two, said deponent called him to dinner. Being interrogated, whether Sir Isaac had pulled on the minus stocking, or gartered the plus stocking, witness replied that he had not. Being asked if Sir Isaac came to dinner, replied that he did not. Being again asked, "at sunset, did you look in on Sir Isaac?" Witness replied, I did. And now, upon your conscience, sir, by the virtue of your oath, in what state were the stockings? Ans. In statu quo ante bellum. It seems Sir Isaac had fought through that whole battle of a long day, so trying a campaign to many people-he had traversed that whole sandy Zaarrah, without calling, or needing to call at one of those fountains, stages, or mansiones, * by which (according to our former explanation) Providence has relieved the continuity of arid soil which else disfigures that long dreary level. This happens to all; but was dinner not dinner, and did supper become dinner, because Sir Isaac Newton ate nothing at the first, and threw the whole day's support upon the last? No, you will say, a rule is not defeated by one casual deviation, nor by one person's constant deviation. Every body else was still dining at two, though Sir Isaac might not; and Sir Isaac himself on most days no more deferred his dinner beyond wo, than he sate with one stocking ofi. But what if every body, Sir Isaac included, had deferred his substantial meal until night, and taken a slight refection only at two? The question put does really represent the very case which has happened with us in England, In 1700, a large part of London took a meal at two P.M., and another at seven