rmed in a phantasma. But the free
agent ought to live well on his travels--some degrees better, without
doubt, than when at home. People seldom live very well at home. There is
always something requiring to be eaten up, that it may not be lost,
which destroys the soothing and satisfactory symmetry of an
unexceptionable dinner. We have detected the same duck through many
unprincipled disguises, playing a different part in the farce of
domestic economy, with a versatility hardly to have been expected in one
of the most generally despised of the web-footed tribe. When travelling
at one's own sweet will, one feeds at a different inn every meal; and,
except when the coincidence of circumstances is against you, there is an
agreeable variety both in the natural and artificial disposition of the
dishes. True that travelling may act as a stimulus--but false that
therefore less nourishment is required. Would Dr Kitchiner, if now
alive, presume to say that it was right for him, who had sat all day
with his feet on the fender, to gobble up, at six o'clock of the
afternoon, as enormous a dinner as we who had walked since sunrise forty
or fifty miles? Because our stimulus had been greater, was our
nourishment to be less? We don't care a curse about stimulus. What we
want, in such a case, is lots of fresh food; and we hold that, under
such circumstances, a man with a sound Tory Church-and-King stomach and
constitution cannot over-eat himself--no, not for his immortal soul.

We had almost forgot to take the deceased Doctor to task for one of the
most free-and-easy suggestions ever made to the ill-disposed, how to
disturb and destroy the domestic happiness of eminent literary
characters. "An introduction to eminent authors may be obtained," quoth
he slyly, "from the booksellers who publish their works."

The booksellers who publish the works of eminent authors have rather
more common sense and feeling, it is to be hoped, than this comes
to--and know better what is the province of their profession. Any one
man may, if he chooses, give any other man an introduction to any third
man in this world. Thus the tailor of any eminent author--or his
bookseller--or his parish minister--or his butcher--or his baker--or his
"man of business"--or his house-builder--may, one and all, give such
travellers as Dr Kitchiner and others, letters of introduction to the
said eminent author in prose or verse. This, we have heard, is sometimes
done--but fortun