st. Every morning we thank ours for keeping
us back, and reserving us to an age in which breakfast had been already
invented. In the words of Ovid we say:--

"Prisca juvent alios: ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor. Haec aetas moribus
apta meis."

Our friend, the Roman cit, has therefore thus far, in his progress through
life, obtained no breakfast, if he ever contemplated an idea so frantic.
But it occurs to you, our faithful reader, that perhaps he will not always
be thus unhappy. We could bring waggon-loads of sentiments, Greek as well
as Roman, which prove, more clearly than the most eminent pikestaff, that,
as the wheel of fortune revolves, simply out of the fact that it has
carried a man downwards, it must subsequently carry him upwards, no matter
what dislike that wheel, or any of its spokes, may bear to that man: "non,
si male nunc sit, et olim sic erit:" and that if a man, through the madness
of his nation, misses coffee and hot rolls at nine, he may easily run into
a leg of mutton at twelve. True it is he may do so: truth is commendable;
and we will not deny that a man may sometimes, by losing a breakfast, gain
a dinner. Such things have been in various ages, and will be again, but not
at Rome. There are reasons against it. We have heard of men who consider
life under the idea of a wilderness--dry as "a remainder biscuit after a
voyage:" and who consider a day under the idea of a little life. Life
is the macrocosm, or world at large; day is the microcosm, or world in
miniature. Consequently, if life is a wilderness, then day, as a little
life, is a little wilderness. And this wilderness can be safely traversed
only by having relays of fountains, or stages for refreshment. Such
stages, they conceive, are found in the several meals which Providence has
stationed at due intervals through the day, whenever the perverseness of
man does not break the chain, or derange the order of succession.

These are the anchors by which man rides in that billowy ocean between
morning and night. The first anchor, viz., breakfast, having given way in
Rome, the more need there is that he should pull up by the second; and
that is often reputed to be dinner. And as your dictionary, good reader,
translated _breakfast_ by that vain word _jentaculum_, so, doubtless, it
will translate _dinner_ by that still vainer word _prandium_. Sincerely we
hope that your own dinner on this day, and through all time coming, may
have a better root in