oned mind. His head is
like a huge spherical chamber, containing a prodigious mass of soft
brains, whereon the rational soul lies softly and snugly couched, as on a
feather-bed; and the eyes which are the windows of the bedchamber, are
usually half-closed, that its slumberings may not be disturbed by external
objects. A mind thus comfortably lodged, and protected from disturbance,
is manifestly most like to perform its functions with regularly and ease.
By dint of good feeding, moreover, the mortal and malignant soul, which is
confined in the belly, and which, by its raging and roaring, puts the
irritable soul in the neighborhood of the heart in an intolerable passion,
and thus renders men crusty and quarrelsome when hungry, is completely
pacified, silenced, and put to rest; whereupon a host of honest,
good-fellow qualities and kind-hearted affections, which had lain perdue,
slily peeping out of the loopholes of the heart, finding this Cerberus
asleep, do pluck up their spirits, turn out one and all in their holiday
suits, and gambol up and down the diaphragm--disposing their possessor to
laughter, good humor, and a thousand friendly offices towards his
fellow-mortals.

As a board of magistrates, formed on this principle, think but very
little, they are the less likely to differ and wrangle about favorite
opinions; and, as they generally transact business upon a hearty dinner,
they are naturally disposed to be lenient and indulgent in the
administration of their duties. Charlemagne was conscious of this, and
therefore ordered in his cartularies, that no judge should hold a court of
justice except in the morning on an empty stomach. A pitiful rule which I
can never forgive, and which I warrant bore hard upon all the poor
culprits in the kingdom. The more enlightened and humane generation of the
present day have taken an opposite course, and have so managed that the
alderman are the best fed men in the community; feasting lustily on the
fat things of the land, and gorging so heartily on oysters and turtles,
that in process of time they acquire the activity of the one, and the
form, the waddle, and the green fat of the other. The consequence is, as I
have just said, these luxurious feastings do produce such a dulcet
equanimity and repose of the soul, rational and irrational, that their
transactions are proverbial for unvarying monotony; and the profound laws
which they enact in their dozing moments, amid the labors of diges