y 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 Celasno
any thing 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.

The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the banquet which
Satan, in the Paradise Regained, provides for a temptation 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,