Sybarite never once saw the sun rise or set during a course of twenty years; yet he lived to a good old age, drank like a centaur, and never went to bed sober."
And when his glass was out, he fell Like some ripe kernel from its shell.
"I was once an anti-gastronomist and a rigid antisaccharinite; sugar and milk were banished from my breakfast-table, vegetables and puddings my only diet, until I almost ceased to vegetate, and my cranium was considered as soft as a custard; and curst hard it was to cast off all culinary pleasures, sweet reminiscences of my infancy, commencing with our first spoonful of pap, for all young protestants are papists; to this day my heart (like Wordsworth's) overflows at the sight of a pap-boat—the boat a child first mans; to speak naughty-cally, as a nurse would say, how many a row is there in the pap-boat—how many squalls attend it when first it comes into contact with the skull! But I am now grown corpulent; in those days I was a lighter-man, and I believe I should have continued to live (exist) upon herbs and roots; but Dr. Kitchener rooted up all my prejudices, and overturned the whole system of my theory by practical illustrations.
"Thus he that's wealthy, if he's wise,
Commands an earthly paradise;
That happy station nowhere found,
But where the glass goes freely round.
Then give us wine, to drown the cares
Of life in our declining years,
That we may gain, if Heav'n think fitting,
By drinking, what was lost by eating:
For though mankind for that offence
Were doom'd to labour ever since,
Yet Mercy has the grape impower'd
To sweeten what the apple sour'd."
To this good-humoured sally of Pendragon succeeded a long dissertation on meats, which it is not meet I should relate, being for the most part idle conceits of Mr. Galen Cornaro, who carried about him a long list of those prescribed eatables, which engender bile, breed the incubus, and produce spleen, until, according to his bill of fare, he had left himself nothing to subsist upon in this land of plenty but a mutton-chop, or a beef-steak. What pleased me most was, that with every fresh bottle the two disciples of Pythagoras and Abernethy became still more vehement in maintaining the necessity for a strict adherence to the theory of water and vegetable economy; while their zeal had so far blinded their recollection, that when the ladies returned from their walk to join us at tea, they were both "bacchi plenis," as Colman has it, something inclining from a right line, and approaching in its motion to serpentine sinuosities. A few more puns from Mr. Pendragon, and another story from the alderman, about his friend, young Tattersall, employing Scroggins the bruiser, disguised as a countryman to beat an impudent Highgate toll-keeper, who had grossly insulted him, finished the amusements of the day, which Mrs. Marigold and Miss Biddy declared had been spent most delightfully, so rural and entertaining, and withal so economical, that the alderman was induced to promise he would not dine at home again of a Sunday for the rest of the summer. To me, at least, it afforded the charm of novelty; and if to my readers it communicates something of character, blended with pleasure in the perusal, I shall not regret my Sunday trip with the Marigold family and first visit to the
GATE HOUSE, HIGHGATE. [ [!-- IMG --]
THE STOCK EXCHANGE.
Have you ever seen Donnybrook fair?
Or in a caveau spent the night?
On Waterloo's plains did you dare
To engage in the terrific fight?
Has your penchant for life ever led
You to visit the Finish or Slums,
At the risk of your pockets and head?
Or in Banco been fixed by the bums?
In a smash at the hells have you been,
When pigeons were pluck'd by the bone?
Or enjoy'd the magnificent scene
When our fourth George ascended his throne?
Have you ever heard Tierney or Canning
A Commons' division address?
Or when to the gallery ganging,
Been floor'd by a rush from the press?
Has your taste for the fine arte impell'd
You to visit a bull-bait or fight?
Or by rattles and charleys propell'd,
In a watch-house been lodged for the night?
In a morning at Bow-street made one
Of a group just to bother sage Birnie?
Stood the racket, got fined, cut and run,
Being fleeced by the watch and attorney?
Or say, have you dined in Guildhall
With the mayor and his corporate souls?
Or been squeezed at a grand civic ball,
With dealers in tallow and coals?
Mere nothings are these, though the range
Through all we have noticed you've been,
When compared to the famed Stock Exchange,
That riotous gambling scene.