e, and by the suavity and elegance of his manners rivets his
affections and secures his zeal for the remainder of his life. The
ministers too have their state dinners, where all important questions
are considered before they are submitted to the grand council of the
nation. The bishops dine in holy ~87~~conclave to benefit Christianity,
and moralize over Champagne on the immorality of mankind. The judges
dine with the lord chancellor on the first day of term, and try their
powers of mastication before they proceed to try the merits of their
fellow citizens' causes. A lawyer must eat his way to the bar, labouring
most voraciously through his commons dinners in the Temple or Lincoln's
Inn Halls, before he has any chance of success in common law, common
pleas, or common causes in the court of King's Bench or Chancery. The
Speaker's parliamentary dinners are splendid spreads for poor senators;
but sometimes the feast is infested with rats, whom his majesty's royal
rat-catcher immediately cages, and contrives, by the aid of a blue
or red ribband, to render extremely useful and docile. Your orthodox
ministers dine on tithes, turtle, and Easter offerings, until they
become as sleek as their own velvet cushions, and eke from charity to
mankind almost as red in the face from the ruby tint of red port,
and the sorrowful recollections of sin and death. The methodist and
sectarians have their pious love feasts--bachelor's fare, bread and
butter and kisses, with a dram of comfort at parting, I suppose. The
deaf, the dumb, the lame, the blind, all have their annual charitable
dinnerings; and even the Actor's Fund is almost entirely dependent on
the fund of amusement they contrive to offer to their friends at their
annual fund dinner. The church-wardens dine upon a child, and the
overseers too often upon the mite extorted from the poor. Even modern
literature is held in thraldom by the banquetings of modern booksellers
and publishers, who by this method contrive to cram the critics with
their crudities, and direct the operation of their servile pens in the
cutting up of poor authors. At the Publisher's Club, held at the Albion,
Dr. Kitchener and Will Jerdau rule the roast; here these worthies may be
heard commenting with ~88~~profound critical consistency on culinaries
and the classics, gurgling down heavy potations of black strap, and
making still heavier remarks upon black letter bibliomania, until all
the party are found labouring "_