llowing. Cold meat appeared
as hot pie, with many other curious and ingenious devices. Then the wine
was so adulterated, compelled, like a melancholic patient, to look
old before its time, and fitted, like a pauper, with a ready-made coat
perceptibly impregnated with bad brandy, and tasted of every thing
but the grape, that, in about six months, I sickened, and no longer
frequented these tasteless and inhospitable retreats for the hungry.

"'To view the ordinary arrangements of a modern dinner is a "sorry
sight:"--a dozen articles placed at once upon the table--then, on
the removal of the covers, comes the ferocious onset; some tremulous
paralytic serving the soup, and scattering it in all directions,
excepting into the plate where it ought to be delivered; ~~425~~~ then
an unhandy dandy mutilates the fish by cutting it in a wrong direction;
here, an officious ignoramus tears asunder the members of a fowl as
coarsely as the four horses dragged Ravillac, limb from limb; there,
another simpleton notching a tongue into dissimilar slices, while a
purblind coxcomb confounds the different sauces, pouring anchovy on
pigeon-pie, and parsley and butter on roast-beef. All these barbarisms
are unknown at my table.

"'Perhaps one of the most gratifying things in nature, far beyond any
thing hitherto conveyed by landscape or historical painting, is to
behold my guests in silence sip their wine. As the glass is held up, the
eye and the orient liquor reciprocally sparkle; its bouquet expands the
nostrils, elevates the eyebrow to admiration, and composes the lips to
a smile. When its crystal receptacle, which is as thin as Indian paper,
(for observe, to use a thick wine-glass is to drink with a gag in your
mouth) touches the lips, they become comprest, to allow the thinnest
possible stream to enter, that its flavour be thoroughly ascertained,
and that successive perceptions of palateable flavour may terminate in
the gulph of ecstacy.

"'I am fully aware that the pleasures of the table cannot be indulged
without some hazard to the constitution; it is therefore the business
of my serious reflections to counteract the invasions of disease, and
provide timely remedies for its attack. A gold box is always placed on
the table with the desert, containing a store of pills, which are of
a very moving quality and speedy operation, called "Peristaltic
persuaders." In an adjoining room, there is a basin, as large as an
ordinary washing-tub, wit