oemaker fall. We leave
it to every reader, whether there would not be more historic unity and
poetic completeness in the _tableau_, were we to read that these good
creatures dined upon the _ci-devant_, after the execution.

Imperial Rome is the _beau ideal_ of the present government of _la belle
France_; and we must own, that, when perusing the exhilarating pages of
Suetonius, it has often occurred to our mind that there is something
wanting in the list of high deeds related of those superb specimens of
humanity exhibited in the Caligulas and Heliogabali. They did so much
for cookery! Yet they seem never to have risen above an indirect
consumption of their subjects, by feeding their lobsters with ignoble
slaves; never did they directly bestow upon Roman freemen the honor of
being served up for the imperial table. Nero murdered his mother and
bade his teacher open his own veins. Would it not read much more
civilized, if the annals of the empire were telling us: _Nero, jam
divus, leniter dixit: O Seneca, Pundit delectabilis et philosophe laute,
quis dubitet te libentissime mihi hodie proferre artocreatem stoicum?_

Strange as it may appear to some readers, that thus the polished Romans
might have learned a lesson of civilization from the Fijians, they will
not reject our suggestion, when they reflect, that, only a short time
ago, they were, probably, as much surprised at finding the government
of so great a country as France adopting imperial Rome as a model
body-politic. Familiarize your mind with the idea, and all difficulties
vanish. It is only the last step which costs,--not the first.

There are many more reasons that might be urged in favor of the
Fijians. We are not aware that the reverend missionaries have given
any statistical tables, showing a regularity in the annual numbers of
consumed persons, male and female, classed according to the reasons why
consumed; but no one can doubt that such tables might be given, and if
so, the whole question of anthropophagism could be very easily buckled
up in a tidy little valise. The Fijians, in the plural, we take it,
have little or nothing to do with it; it is the abstract, will-less,
impersonal Fijian--who, according to the learned Ferrari,[A] would be
called, now, Podesta Fijian, now Consul Fijian, now Papa Fijianus--that
snuffs the flavor of his own dear natural _pot a feu_; and Right
or Wrong, Just or Unjust, Commendable or Revolting, are schoolboy
distinctions, no lo