original speck of the amor immunditiæ, the hereditary failing of the first parent yet manifest-his voice as yet not broken but something between a childish treble and a grumble--the mild forerunner, or præludium, of a grunt. He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled-but what a sacrifice of the ex terior tegument! There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling as it is well called-the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance-with the adhesive oleaginous-oh call it not fat --but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it—the tender blossoming of fat-fat cropped in the bud--taken in the shoot -in the first innocence—the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food-the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna—or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosial result, or common substance. Behold him while he is doing-it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive to How equably he twirleth round the string! Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty eyes-radiant jellies-shooting stars See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth! -wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal-wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation-from these sins he is happily snatched away "Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade, his memory is odoriferous-no clown curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon-no coal-heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages-he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure-and for such a tomb might be content to die. He is the best of sapors. Pineapple is great. She is indeed almost too transcendent-a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause-too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her-like lovers' kisses, she biteth-she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish-but she stoppeth at the palate-she meddleth not with the appetite-and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. Pig-let me speak his praise-is no less provocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unravelled without hazard, he is—good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours' fare. 66 66 en I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. Presents," I often say, dear absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barndoor chickens, (those "tame villatic fowl,") capons, plovers brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would my not, like Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upor pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly, (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what,) a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate-it argues an insensibility. I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holyday without stuffing a sweetmeat or some nice thing into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plumcake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London bridge) a gray-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, schoolboy-like, I made him a present of the whole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of selfsatisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the bridge my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger that I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I—I myself, and not another-would eat her nice cake knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may accidentally improve me; and in the rich man's houses and pictures, his parks and gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness has none of these palliatives it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, unqualified insult. Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as possible, that their less-favoured neighbours, seeing little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to question the right. But these married monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces. Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-married couple-in that of the lady particularly; it tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this world; that you can have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none; nor wishes either perhaps; but this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted, not expressed. The excessive airs which those people give themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow them to understand the mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we who have not had the happiness to be made free of the company: but their arrogance is not content within these limits. If a single person presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an incompetent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaintance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her condition above a fortnight before, in a question on which I had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the properest mode of breeding oysters for the London market, had the assurance to ask with a sneer how such an old bachelor as I could pretend to know anything about such matters. But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which these creatures give themselves when they come, as they generally do, to have children. When I consider how little of a rarity children are-that every street and blind alley swarms with them-that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance-that there are few marriages that are not blessed with at least one of these bargains-how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c., I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so common I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assurə with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. But why we, who are not their natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, and incenseour tribute and homage of admiration-I do not see. "Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children:" so says the excellent office in our Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women. "Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:" so say I; but then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us that are weaponless; let them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows are doubleheaded; they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the other. As, for instance, where you come into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses) you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, if you find them more than usually engaging—if you are taken with their pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp and play with them, some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending them out of the room; they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like children. With one or other of these forks the arrow is sure to hit you. I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying with their brats, if it gives them any pain; but I think it unreasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see no occasion to love a whole family, perhaps eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately-to love all the pretty dears, because children are so engaging. I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love my dog;" that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog or a lesser thing—any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch, or a ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and anything that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children have a real character and an essential being of themselves: they are amiable or unamiable per se; I must love or hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly they stand with me upon their own stock, as much as men and women do. Oh! but you will say, sure it is an attractive age-there is something in the tender years of infancy that of itself charms us. That is the very reason why I am more nice about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them; but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another in glory; but a violet should look and smell the daintiest. I was always rather squeamish in my women and children. But this is not the worst: one must be admitted into their familiarity at least, before they can complain of inattention It implies visits, and some kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage-if you did not come in on the wife's side-if you did not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on-look about you—your tenure is precarious-before a twelvemonth shall roll over your head you shall find your old friend gradually grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence after the period of his marriage. With some limitations they can endure that; but that the good man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship in which they were not consulted, though it happened before they knew him-before they that are now man and wife ever met-this is intolerable to them. Every long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these new mintings. Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and worm you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good things, but an oddity, is one of the ways they have a particular kind of stare for the purpose -till at last the husband, who used to defer to your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of understanding and |