he Roman dinner, this is an ample one. Now first the
Roman was fit for dinner, in a condition of luxurious ease; business
ever--that day's load of anxiety laid aside--his _cuticle_, as he delighted
to talk, cleansed and polished--nothing more to do or to think of until
the next morning, he might now go and dine, and get drunk with a safe
conscience. Besides, if he does not get dinner now, when will he get it?
For most demonstrably he has taken nothing yet which comes near in value
to that basin of soup which many of ourselves take at the Roman hour of
bathing. No; we have kept our man fasting as yet. It is to be hoped that
something is coming at last.

It _does_ come,--dinner, the great meal of "coena;" the meal sacred to
hospitality and genial pleasure, comes now to fill up the rest of the day,
until light fails altogether.

Many people are of opinion that the Romans only understood what the
capabilities of dinner were. It is certain that they were the first great
people that discovered the true secret and meaning of dinner, the great
office which it fulfils, and which we in England are now so generally
acting on. Barbarous nations,--and none were, in that respect, more
barbarous than our own ancestors,--made this capital blunder; the brutes,
if you asked them what was the use of dinner, what it was meant for, stared
at you and replied--as a horse would reply if you put the same question
about his provender--that it was to give him strength for finishing his
work! Therefore, if you point your telescope back to antiquity about twelve
or one o'clock in the daytime, you will descry our most worthy ancestors
all eating for their very lives, eating as dogs eat, viz. in bodily fear
that some other dog will come and take their dinner away. What swelling of
the veins in the temples! (see Boswell's natural history of Dr. Johnson at
dinner;) what intense and rapid deglutition! what odious clatter of knives
and plates! what silence of the human voice! what gravity! what fury in the
libidinous eyes with which they contemplate the dishes! Positively it was
an _indecent_ spectacle to see Dr. Johnson at dinner. But, above all, what
maniacal haste and hurry, as if the fiend were waiting with red-hot pincers
to lay hold of the hindermost!

Oh, reader, do you recognize in this abominable picture your respected
ancestors and ours? Excuse us for saying--"What monsters!" We have a right
to call our own ancestors monsters; and, if so, we m