he Dinner

The sun was now terminating his diurnal course, and the lights were
glittering on the festal board. When the ladies had retired, and the
Burgundy had taken two or three tours of the table, the following
conversation took place:--

_Squire Headlong._
Push about the bottle: Mr Escot, it stands with you. No heeltaps. As
to skylight, liberty-hall.

_Mr Mac Laurel._
Really, Squire Headlong, this is the vara nectar itsel. Ye hae
saretainly discovered the tarrestrial paradise, but it flows wi' a
better leecor than milk an' honey.

_The Reverend Doctor Gaster._
Hem! Mr Mac Laurel! there is a degree of profaneness in that
observation, which I should not have looked for in so staunch a
supporter of church and state. Milk and honey was the pure food of the
antediluvian patriarchs, who knew not the use of the grape, happily
for them.--(_Tossing off a bumper of Burgundy._)

_Mr Escot._
Happy, indeed! The first inhabitants of the world knew not the use
either of wine or animal food; it is, therefore, by no means
incredible that they lived to the age of several centuries, free from
war, and commerce, and arbitrary government, and every other species
of desolating wickedness. But man was then a very different animal to
what he now is: he had not the faculty of speech; he was not
encumbered with clothes; he lived in the open air; his first step out
of which, as Hamlet truly observes, is _into his grave_[5.1]. His
first dwellings, of course, were the hollows of trees and rocks. In
process of time he began to build: thence grew villages; thence grew
cities. Luxury, oppression, poverty, misery, and disease kept pace
with the progress of his pretended improvements, till, from a free,
strong, healthy, peaceful animal, he has become a weak, distempered,
cruel, carnivorous slave.

_The Reverend Doctor Gaster._
Your doctrine is orthodox, in so far as you assert that the original
man was not encumbered with clothes, and that he lived in the open
air; but, as to the faculty of speech, that, it is certain, he had,
for the authority of Moses----

_Mr Escot._
Of course, sir, I do not presume to dissent from the very exalted
authority of that most enlightened astronomer and profound
cosmogonist, who had, moreover, the advantage of being inspired; but
when I indulge myself with a ramble in the fields of speculation, and
attempt to deduce what is probable and rational from the sources of
analysis, expe