man--than ever."

_New Monthly Magazine._

* * * * *

ROYAL APPETITES.

Charles XII. was brave, noble, generous, and disinterested,--a complete
hero, in fact, and a regular fire-eater. Yet, in spite of these
qualifications and the eulogiums of his biographer, it is pretty evident
to those who impartially consider the career of this potentate, that he
was by no means of a sane mind. In short, to speak plainly, he was mad,
and deserved a strait-waistcoat as richly as any straw-crowned monarch
in Bedlam. A single instance, in _my_ opinion, fully substantiates
this. I allude to his absurd freak at Frederickshall, when, in order to
discover how long he could exist without nourishment, he abstained from
all kinds of food for more than seventy hours! Now, would any man in his
senses have done this? Would Louis XVIII., for instance, that wise and
ever-to-be-lamented monarch? Had it been the _reverse_ indeed--had
Charles, instead of practising starvation, adopted the opposite
expedient, and endeavoured to ascertain the greatest possible quantity
of meat, fruit, bread, wine, vegetables, Sec. &c. he could have
_disposed of_ in any given time--why then it might have been
something! But to _fast_ for three days! if this be not madness--!
Indeed, there is but one reason I could ever conceive for a person not
eating; and that is, when, like poor Count Ugolino and his family, he
can get _nothing to eat_!

Charles, now, and Louis--what a contrast! The first despised the
pleasures of the table, abjured wine, and would, I dare say, just
as soon have been without "a distinguishing taste" as with it. Your
Bourbon, on the contrary, a five-mealed man, quaffing right Falernian
night and day; and wisely esteeming the gratification of his palate of
such importance, as absolutely to send from Lisle to Paris--distance
of I know not how many score leagues--at a crisis, too, of peculiar
difficulty--for a single _p