t has got a Staff appointment. Tims was lately
rumoured to be in a galloping consumption; but the very terms of the
report, about one so sedentary, were sufficient to give it the lie.
Though puny, he is far from being unwell; and still engaged in polishing
tea-spoons and other plated articles, at a rate cheaper than travelling
gypsies do horn. Prince Leopold is now King of the Belgians--but we must
put an end in the Tent to that portentous snore.

"Arise, awake, or be for ever fallen!"

Ho--ho! gentlemen--so you have had the precaution to sleep in your
clothes. The sun, like Maga, is mounting higher and higher in heaven; so
let us, we beseech you, to breakfast, and then off to the Moors.

"Substantial breakfast!" by Dugald Dhu, and by Donald Roy, and by Hamish
Bhan--heaped up like icebergs round the pole. How nobly stands in the
centre that ten-gallon Cask of Glenlivet! Proud is that Round to court
his shade. That twenty-pound Salmon lies beneath it even as yesterday he
lay beneath the cliff, while a column of light falls from him on that
Grouse-Pie. Is not that Ham beautiful in the calm consciousness of his
protection? That Tongue mutely eloquent in his praise? Tap him with your
knuckles, tenderly as if you loved him--and that with all your heart and
soul you do--and is not the response firm as from the trunk of the
gnarled oak? He is yet "Virgin of Proserpina"--"by Jove" he is; no
wanton lip has ever touched his mouth so chaste; so knock out the bung,
and let us hear him gurgle. With diviner music does he fill the pitcher,
and with a diviner liquidity of light than did ever Naiad from fount of
Helicon or Castaly, pour into classic urn gracefully uplifted by Grecian
damsel to her graceful head, and borne away, with a thanksgiving hymn,
to her bower in the olive-grove.

All eggs are good eating; and 'tis a vulgar heresy which holds that
those laid by sea-fowl have a fishy taste. The egg of the Sew-mew is
exceeding sweet; so is that of the Gull. Pleasant is even the yolk of
the Cormorant--in the north of England ycleped the Scarth, and in the
Lowlands of Scotland the Black Byuter. Try a Black Byuter's egg, my dear
boy; for though not newly laid, it has since May been preserved in
butter, and is as fresh as a daisy after a shower. Do not be afraid of
stumbling on a brace of embryo Black Byuters in the interior of the
globe, for by its weight we pronounce it an egg in no peril of
parturition. You may now smack your