er than
[Greek: artositos]. Otherwise, in good truth, "moonshine and turn-out"
at eleven, A.M., would be even worse than "tea and turn-out" at eight,
P.M., which the "fervida juventus" of young England so loudly detests. But
however that might be, in this convergement of the several frontiers, and
the confusion that ensued, one cannot wonder that, whilst the two bladders
collapsed into one idea, they actually expanded into four names, two Latin
and two Greek, _gustus_ and _gustatio_, [Greek: geusis], and
[Greek: geusma], which all alike express the merely tentative or
exploratory act of a _praegustator_ or professional "taster" in a
king's household: what, if applied to a fluid, we should denominate
sipping.

At last, by so many steps all in one direction, things had come to such
a pass--the two prelusive meals of the Roman morning, each for itself
separately vague from the beginning, had so communicated and interfused
their several and joint vaguenesses, that at last no man knew or cared to
know what any other man included in his idea of either; how much or how
little. And you might as well have hunted in the woods of Ethiopia for
Prester John, or fixed the parish of the everlasting Jew,[8] as have
attempted to say what "jentaculum" might be, or what "prandium." Only one
thing was clear--what they were _not_. Neither was or wished to be anything
that people cared for. They were both empty shadows; but shadows as they
were, we find from Cicero that they had a power of polluting and profaning
better things than themselves.

We presume that no rational man will henceforth look for "dinner"--that
great idea according to Dr. Johnson--that sacred idea according to
Cicero--in a bag of moonshine on one side, or a bag of pollution on
the other. _Prandium_, so far from being what our foolish dictionaries
pretend--dinner itself--never in its palmiest days was more or other than
a miserable attempt at being _luncheon_. It was a _conatus_, what
physiologists call a _nisus_, a struggle in a very ambitious spark,
or _scintilla_, to kindle into a fire. This _nisus_ went on for some
centuries; but finally issued in smoke. If _prandium_ had worked out his
ambition, had "the great stream of tendency" accomplished all his wishes,
_prandium_ never could have been more than a very indifferent luncheon. But
now,

II. We have to offer another fact, ruinous to our dictionaries on another
ground. Various circumstances have disguised the trut