are all good and bad. Give me the heart that's huge as all Asia; and
unless a man, be a villain outright, account him one of the best
tempered blades in the world.

That night, in his right regal hall, King Abrazza received us. And in
merry good time a fine supper was spread.

Now, in thus nocturnally regaling us, our host was warranted by many
ancient and illustrious examples.

For old Jove gave suppers; the god Woden gave suppers; the Hindoo
deity Brahma gave suppers; the Red Man's Great Spirit gave suppers:--
chiefly venison and game.

And many distinguished mortals besides.

Ahasuerus gave suppers; Xerxes gave suppers; Montezuma gave suppers;
Powhattan gave suppers; the Jews' Passovers were suppers; the Pharaohs
gave suppers; Julius Caesar gave suppers:--and rare ones they were;
Great Pompey gave suppers; Nabob Crassus gave suppers; and
Heliogabalus, surnamed the Gobbler, gave suppers.

It was a common saying of old, that King Pluto gave suppers; some say
he is giving them still. If so, he is keeping tip-top company, old
Pluto:--Emperors and Czars; Great Moguls and Great Khans; Grand Lamas
and Grand Dukes; Prince Regents and Queen Dowagers:--Tamerlane hob-a-
nobbing with Bonaparte; Antiochus with Solyman the Magnificent;
Pisistratus pledging Pilate; Semiramis eating bon-bons with Bloody
Mary, and her namesake of Medicis; the Thirty Tyrants quaffing three
to one with the Council of Ten; and Sultans, Satraps, Viziers,
Hetmans, Soldans, Landgraves, Bashaws, Doges, Dauphins, Infantas,
Incas, and Caciques looking on.

Again: at Arbela, the conqueror of conquerors, conquering son of
Olympia by Jupiter himself, sent out cards to his captains,--
Hephestion, Antigonus, Antipater, and the rest--to join him at ten,
p.m., in the Temple of Belus; there, to sit down to a victorious
supper, off the gold plate of the Assyrian High Priests. How
majestically he poured out his old Madeira that night!--feeling grand
and lofty as the Himmalehs; yea, all Babylon nodded her towers in his
soul!

Spread, heaped up, stacked with good things; and redolent of citrons
and grapes, hilling round tall vases of wine; and here and there,
waving with fresh orange-boughs, among whose leaves, myriads of small
tapers gleamed like fire-flies in groves,--Abrazza's glorious board
showed like some banquet in Paradise: Ceres and Pomona presiding; and
jolly Bacchus, like a recruit with a mettlesome rifle, staggering back
as he fires off the bottles