st
inventus." Toad-in-the-hole laughed outrageously at this: in fact, we all
thought he was choking; and, at the earnest request of the company, a
musical composer furnished a most beautiful glee upon the occasion,
which was sung five times after dinner, with universal applause and
inextinguishable laughter, the words being these, (and the chorus
so contrived, as most beautifully to mimic the peculiar laughter of
Toad-in-the-hole:)--

"Et interrogatum est a Toad-in-the hole--Ubi est ille reporter?
Et responsum est cum cachinno--Non est inventus."

CHORUS.

"Deinde iteratum est ab omnibus, cum cachinnatione undulante--
Non est inventus."

Toad-in-the-hole, I ought to mention, about nine years before, when an
express from Edinburgh brought him the earliest intelligence of the
Burke-and-Hare revolution in the art, went mad upon the spot; and, instead
of a pension to the express for even one life, or a knighthood, endeavored
to burke him; in consequence of which he was put into a strait waistcoat.
And that was the reason we had no dinner then. But now all of us were alive
and kicking, strait-waistcoaters and others; in fact, not one absentee
was reported upon the entire roll. There were also many foreign amateurs
present.

Dinner being over, and the cloth drawn, there was a general call made for
the new glee of _Non est inventus_; but, as this would have interfered with
the requisite gravity of the company during the earlier toasts, I overruled
the call. After the national toasts had been given, the first official
toast of the day was, _The Old Man of the Mountains_--drunk in solemn
silence.

Toad-in-the-hole returned thanks in a neat speech. He likened himself to
the Old Man of the Mountains, in a few brief allusions, that made the
company absolutely yell with laughter; and he concluded with giving the
health of

_Mr. Von Hammer_, with many thanks to him for his learned History of the
Old Man and his subjects the assassins.

Upon this I rose and said, that doubtless most of the company were aware
of the distinguished place assigned by orientalists to the very learned
Turkish scholar Von Hammer the Austrian; that he had made the profoundest
researches into our art as connected with those early and eminent artists
the Syrian assassins in the period of the Crusaders; that his work had been
for several years deposited, as a rare treasure of art, in the library
of the club. Even the author's name, gentlemen