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I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's,15 and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, "Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death?'' I forget the decision.

ingly impart a share of the good things of this | risy of goodness; and above all, I wished never life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in to see the face again of that insidious, good-forthis kind) to a friend. I protest I take as nothing, old gray impostor. great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his Our ancestors were nice14 in their method of relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine sacrificing these tender victims. We read of own. "Presents," I often say, "endear Ab-pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, sents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The barn-door chickens (those 'tame villatic10 age of discipline is gone by, or it would be fowl''), capons, plovers, brawn,11 barrels of curious to inquire (in a philosophical light oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. merely) what effect this process might have I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue towards intenerating and dulcifying a subof my friend. But a stop must be put some-stance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh where. One would not, like Lear, "give every of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. thing.''12 I make my stand upon13 pig. Me-Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn thinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of good flavours, to extra-domiciliate, or send out the practice. It might impart a gustoof 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 holiday without stuffing a sweet-meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, 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 cox combry 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 self-satisfaction; 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 I have an almost feminine partiality for old then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would china. When I go to see any great house, I be taking in thinking that I-I myself and not inquire for the china-closet, and next for the another-would eat her nice cake and what picture-gallery. I cannot defend the order of should I say to her the next time I saw her-preference, but by saying that we have all some how naughty I was to part with her pretty taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of present! and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she had sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last-and I blamed my impertinent I had no repugnance then-why should I now spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place hypochave?-to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured

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His sauce should be considered. Decidedly a few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are-but consider, he is a weakling-a flower.

FROM THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA
OLD CHINA

our remembering distinctly that it was an ac quired one. I can call to mind the first play. and the first exhibition, that I was taken to; but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination.

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grotesques, that, under the notion of men and women, float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world before perspective-a china tea-cup.

those times!) we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then when we felt the money that we

I like to see my old friends-whom distance cannot diminish-figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma still-paid for it. for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, has made to spring up beneath their sandals.

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions.

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver-two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another-for likeness is identity on tea cups-is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead-a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream!

Farther on-if far or near can be predicated of their world-see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.2

Here-a cow and rabbit couchant and coextensive so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay,3

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson+ (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of an afternoon). some of these speciosa miracula” upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the first time using; and could not help remarking, how favourable circumstances had been to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort-when a

passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget.6

"I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state'-so she was pleased to ramble on-in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and O! how much ado I had to get you to consent in

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"Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbareand all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington,s fearing you should be too late-and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures-and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome-and when you presented it to me -and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating, you called it)—and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till day-break-was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit-your old corbeau”—for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteenor sixteen shillings was it?-a great affair we thought it then-which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now.

"When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo,10 which we christened the 'Lady Blanche;' when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money-and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness11 of Lionardos. Yet do you?

7 A square in the heart
of London, best
known for its fruit
and flower markets.

8 In northern London.

9 black coat

10 Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian painter. 11 Merchant of Venice, III, i, 128.

This particular volume, with notes in it by
Coleridge, is now in the British Museum.

great an extent as we ever found in the other passages-and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat, and the play, afterwards! Now we can only pay our money, and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then-but sight, and all, I think is gone with our poverty.

"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks | With such reflections we consoled our pride then to Enfield, and Potter's Bar, and Waltham,12 and I appeal to you, whether, as a woman, I when we had a holiday-holidays and all other met generally with less attention and accommofun are gone, now we are rich-and the little dation than I have done since in more expensive nandbasket in which I used to deposit our day's situations in the house? The getting in indeed, fare of savory cold lamb and salad-and how and the crowding up those inconvenient stairyou would pry about at noontide for some cases, was bad enough,-but there was still a decent house, where we might go in, and pro-law of civility to women recognized to quite as duce our store-only paying for the ale that you must call for and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth-and wish for such another honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a-fishing—and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us-but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely | grudging Piscator13 his Trout Hall? Now, when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of the way-and go into a fine inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the expense-which, after all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a precarious welcome.

"There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they became quite common-in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear-to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves now-that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat-when two people, living together as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury which both like; while each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share.

selves, in that sense of the word. It may give
them a hint how to make much of others. But
now-what I mean by the word—we never do
make much of ourselves.
None but the poor
can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of
all, but persons as we were, just above poverty.

"You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexam and the Surrender of Calais,14 and Bani see no harm in people making much of themnister15 and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood16—when we squeezed out our shilling a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery-where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me— and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me-and the pleasure was the "I know what you were going to say, that it better for a little shame-and when the curtain is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to drew up, what cared we for our place in the make all meet-and much ado we used to have house, or what mattered it where we were sit-every Thirty-first Night of December to account ting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the court of Illyria?17 You used to say, that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially-that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going-that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the stage -because a word lost would have been a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up.

12 London suburbs.
13 See Walton's The
Complete Angler, p.
264.
14 Plays by George Col-
man the younger.

for our exceedings-many a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had spent so much-or that we had not spent so much—or that it was impossible we should spend so much next year-and still we found our slender capital decreasing-but then, betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without that for the future-and the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never poor till now), we pockaeted up our loss, and in conclusion, with lusty 16 A comedy by Thomas brimmers' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, 18 as you called 17 In As You Like It and Tirelfth Night. 18 Charles Cotton: The New Year.

15 John Bannister,

pupil of Garrick.

Morton.

him), we used to welcome in the 'coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year-no flattering promises about the new year doing better for us.''

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
(1775-1864)

FROM IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
METELLUS AND MARIUS*

secrecy; they have sounded the horn once only, and hoarsely and low and mournfully.

Marius. Was that ladder I see yonder among the caper-bushes and purple lilies, under where the fig tree grows out of the rampart, left for me?

Metellus. Even So, wert thou willing. Wouldst thou mount it?

Marius. Rejoicingly. If none are below or near, may I explore the state of things by entering the city?

Metellus. Use thy discretion in that.

What seest thou? Wouldst thou leap down? Lift the ladder.

Marius. Are there spikes in it where it sticks in the turf? I should slip else.

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of Metellus. Well met, Caius Marius! My orwealth which her dear imagination had conjured lers are to find instantly a centurion who shall up out of a clear income of poor hundred mount the walls; one capable of observation, pounds a year. "It is true we were happier acute in remark, prompt, calm, active, intrepid. when we were poorer, but we were also younger, | The Numantians are sacrificing to the gods in my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thank ful. It strengthened, and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting power-those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten-with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride, where we formerly walked; live better, and lie softer-and shall be wise to do so-than we had means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days return could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a-day-could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and I be young to see them-could the good old oneshilling gallery days return-they are dreams, my cousin, now-but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa-be once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor Marius. There is a murmur like the hum of gallery scramblers-could I once more hear bees in the bean-field of Cereaté;1 for the sun those anxious shrieks of yours-and the deli-is hot, and the ground is thirsty. When will it cious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us-I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Cræsus19 had, or the great Jew R-20 is supposed to have, to purchase it.

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Metellus. How! bravest of our centurions, art even thou afraid? Seest thou any one by? Marius. Ay; some hundreds close beneath me.

Metellus. Retire, then. Hasten back; I will protect thy descent.

Marius. May I speak, O Metellus, without an offence to discipline? Metellus. Say.

Marius. Listen! Dost thou not hear? Metellus. Shame on thee! alight, alight! my shield shall cover thee.

1 The rustic home of Marius's childhood, near Arpinum.

men

The siege and capture, in 132 B. C.. of the
8,000
Numantians, struggling with
against the whole power of Rome, was one of
the stages in the disgraceful third Punic war.
which was conducted by Scipio Africanus the
Younger. Caius Cæcilius Metellus, the tribune,
was a comparatively unimportant personage.
Marius, the centurion, of obscure birth, rose
later to be seven times consul. Plutarch tells
us that Scipio had marked the youth's good
qualities, and when asked who should succeed
himself in case of accident, had touched the
shoulder of Marius, saying, "Perhaps this
man" which saying "raised the hopes of
Marius like a divine oracle." On this slight
historical foundation Landor constructs his
dramatic scene. The Numantians, in all prob-
ability, had no regular walls; and Appian
says that some of them preferred surrender to
death and were led in a Roman Triumph.

have drunk up for me the blood that has run, | Caius Marius? Thy visage is scorched: thy and is yet oozing on it, from those fresh speech may wander after such an enterprise; bodies!

thy shield burns my hand.

Marius. I thought it had cooled again. Why, truly, it seems hot: I now feel it.

Metellus. How! We have not fought for many days; what bodies, then, are fresh ones? Marius. Close beneath the wall are those of infants and of girls; in the middle of the road are youths, emaciated; some either unwounded or wounded months ago; some on their spears, others on their swords: no few have received in mutual death the last interchange of friendship; their daggers unite them, hilt to hilt, bosom to bosom. Metellus. Mark rather the living,-what are could not kill, could not part from. She had they about?

Metellus. Wipe off those embers. Marius. "Twere better: there will be none opposite to shake them upon, for some time. The funereal horn, that sounded with such feebleness, sounded not so from the faint heart of him who blew it. Him I saw; him only of the living. Should I say it? there was another: there was one child whom its parent

hidden it in her robe, I suspect; and, when the Marius. About the sacrifice, which portends fire had reached it, either it shrieked or she them, I conjecture, but little good,-it burns did. For suddenly a cry pierced through the sullenly and slowly. The victim will lie upon crackling pinewood, and something of round the pyre till morning, and still be unconsumed, in figure fell from brand to brand, until it unless they bring more fuel.

I will leap down and walk on cautiously, and return with tidings, if death should spare me. Never was any race of mortals so unmilitary as these Numantians; no watch, no stations, no palisades across the streets.

reached the pavement, at the feet of him who had blown the horn. I rushed toward him, for I wanted to hear the whole story, and felt the pressure of time. Condemn not my weakness, O Cæcilius! I wished an enemy to live an hour longer; for my orders were to explore and

Metellus. Did they want, then, all the wood bring intelligence. When I gazed on him, in for the altar?

Marius. It appears so-I will return anon. Metellus. The gods speed thee, my brave, honest Marius!

Marius (returned). The ladder should have been better spiked for that slippery ground. I am down again safe, however. Here a man may walk securely, and without picking his steps.

height almost gigantic, I wondered not that the blast of his trumpet was so weak: rather did I wonder that Famine, whose hand had indented every limb and feature, had left him any voice articulate. I rushed toward him, however, ere my eyes had measured either his form or strength. He held the child against me, and staggered under it.

"Behold," he exclaimed, "the glorious orsawest.nament of a Roman triumph!"

Metellus. Tell me, Caius, what thou
Marius. The streets of Numantia.
Metellus. Doubtless; but what else?
Marius. The temples and markets and places
of exercise and fountains.

Metellus. Art thou crazed, centurion? what more? Speak plainly, at once, and briefly.

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I stood horror-stricken; when suddenly drops, as of rain, pattered down from the pyre. I looked; and many were the precious stones, many were the amulets and rings and bracelets, and other barbaric ornaments, unknown to me in form or purpose, that tinkled on the hardened and black branches, from mothers and wives and betrothed maids; and some, too, I can imagine, from robuster arms-things of joyance, won in battle. The crowd of incumMarius. Those, O Metellus, lie scattered, al- bent bodies was so dense and heavy, that though not indeed far asunder. The greater neither the fire nor the smoke could penetrate part of the soldiers and citizens-of the upward from among them; and they sank, fathers, husbands, widows, wives, espoused—| whole and at once, into the smouldering cavern were assembled together.

Marius. I beheld, then, all Numantia. Metellus. Has terror maddened thee? hast thou descried nothing of the inhabitants but those carcasses under the ramparts?

Metellus. About the altar?

Marius. Upon it.

eaten out below. He at whose neck hung the trumpet felt this, and started.

"There is yet room," he cried, "and there

Metellus. So busy and earnest in devotion! is strength enough yet, both in the element and but how all upon it?

Marius. It blazed under them, and over them, and round about them.

in me."

He extended his withered arms, he thrust forward the gaunt links of his throat, and upon

Metellus. Immortal gods! Art thou sane, gnarled knees, that smote each other audibly,

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