Nothing but want is an excuse for bad living—for not restoring ourselves in the best manner possible. Only think that every seven years we are made entirely new! Our whole frame is consumed, and new particles of matter accrue in place of the old ones, during that period. Then to reflect that we are made up of half boiled potatoes, raw meat, and doughy pie-crust! The very thought of it is enough to lower our self-respect, and to diminish very sensibly the regard we owe to others.
It is intended by nature that we should have taste—that we should select our food and make it palatable. The infinite variety of plants and animals subject to the human stomach, testify to the superiority of man. Without the power of assimilation, what sympathy could there exist between him and the rest of Creation? To say we are fond of trout, of grouse, of venison, is but another way of expressing our affection for fish, bird, and deer. What would these animals be to us if we did not eat them? What we to them? And does not our love often partake of the same characteristics? Do we not frequently crush that which we tenderly press to our bosoms?
The Germans have a terrible idiom for expressing the highest paroxysm of affection. They say “they love a woman well enough to eat her.” The idea is monstrous; and yet can it be denied that the greatest intimacy imaginable is the identity produced by assimilation. The idea, in spite of its apparent coarseness, is purely transcendental. And is not the converse of this principle admitted by all civilized nations? What do the terms “distasteful,” “disgusting,” “nauseating,” “sickening,” signify? What else but that these things do not agree with our stomachs? there are no stronger similes in the English language. Mark the climax; “distasteful,” referring to the tongue; “disgusting,” having reference to the palate; “nauseating,” applying to the throat; and “sickening,” proceeding, ex profundis, from the stomach! Here you have the whole gamut of human pathos—in which the stomach is, after all, the key-note—the heart being nothing but the sounding-board.
Even knowledge borrows its terms from the stomach. Our scientific acquisitions are “crude” and “undigested,” when they have not been systematized; and a man is “raw,” when he has neither tact or experience in the common pursuits of life. One half of our vocabulary is taken from the palate and the stomach—the milky-way of that microcosm of which man is the universe. Nor have we as yet properly watched that wonderful economy of nature, by which we are constantly consumed and restored—those unceasing pulsations between life and death, which, when undisturbed, are the cause of so much enjoyment. We watch the heavenly bodies, we rejoice over the discovery of a new planet, or an asteroid; we espy comets, and endeavor to account for their movements and perturbations, while a much more wonderful process is going on every day before our eyes, without exciting our astonishment. How comes it that the stomach, out of the most heterogeneous matters treasured up in it, is daily preparing flesh, bones, brains, the enamel of the teeth, the horny substance of the hair and nails, &c.? Can any philosopher explain how the particles of inanimate matter are vivified and thrown from the womb of life—the stomach—into circulation, to perform with the blood those rapid revolutions which mark our existence, and bear such a close analogy to the revolution of our planet round the sun? We look for wonders to the stars, and are a living wonder ourselves—a microcosm much more astonishing and interesting than all above and beneath us. The stomach is the great laboratory of the world, and yet how indifferent are the greater part of mankind to the gentle affinities of that much abused organ! We cultivate a good appearance—a healthy complexion—a clear eye, handsome teeth, and all that, but entirely neglect the gentle admonitions of that organ which alone can impart these virtues. Men talk of hereditary blood; but of what possible use is it without an hereditary good stomach? Give me a good stomach, and the blood will follow as a matter of course.
We talk of improving the breed of cattle, of horses, sheep, &c. But how is it done? By what other principal means than by improved feeding, and taking care that nothing shall interfere with the proper digestion of the improved food. You may use every possible means of improving the breed, without improved feeding the race will degenerate. And so it is with man. Whole nations, as, for instance, the English, wear a better aspect than others, merely because they are better feeders. Meat-eaters have generally a more florid complexion, and, on an average, a greater development of brains. They are, usually, not easily wrought; but when excited, “perplexed in the extreme;” and as slow to back out of as they are to commence a fight. We imagine these qualities inherent in the race; but they are the offsprings of the stomach, and nothing else. Change the diet of that nation, and she will soon lose her distinguishing characteristics. And so it is with certain classes of society. Why is the mob of England cowardly? Because it is badly fed. Increase the wages of the laboring man so that he can obtain beef once a day, and no soldiery in the world will be able to cope with him. He would soon show symptoms of animation; he would, in very characteristic language begin “to feel his oats.” Nothing is equal to the contempt which well-fed people have for those who are badly fed. The former are called respectable, the latter are thought capable of any mischief that can be conceived of. Pauper ubique jacet.
Between the stomach and the highest faculty of our souls there is a very close connection, though men have vainly endeavored to disprove it. Heavy food, which calls for undue action of the stomach, paralyzes, for a time at least, all mental action, and destroys the highest power of the mind—imagination. By gentle stimulants, however, we may increase both—provided we are temperate. You see better with a spy-glass than with the naked eye, provided you do not draw it out beyond the proper focus. Again; good cheer promotes cordiality, friendship, benevolence, and charity. Only the highest paroxysm of love is capable of triumphing over the stomach. But how long does it last? And does it not, in the end, warm itself at the chemical fire of good cheer, or die for the want of it? Love does very well during the hey-days of the blood; while the stomach, with its even sway, governs until death, with a power which increases as it goes on. Every passion fades as we pass the meridian of life, or dwells only in that great faculty of the soul, reminiscence, until that even becomes palsied by the gnawing tooth of time; but the sensitiveness of the palate increases—a regular gourmandizer scarcely existing before the age of forty. Our taste becomes matured with our judgment; when reason waits upon the tender passions, they have already flown. Every other passion has a regular rise and fall, and a culmination point, the pleasures of the palate alone are fixed and immovable as the eternal stars in the firmament. The fiery youth may “sigh like furnace,” and make “ballads to his mistress’ eyebrow,” and man “may seek the bubble reputation even at the cannon’s mouth;” but the sober justice is “capon lined;” he is the only sensible person among them, and guards against the bowels of compassion, by that completeness about the region of the stomach which is generally received as prima faciæ evidence of good nature. The Chinese—the oldest civilized people on earth—require that their justices should be fat; and the popular idiom of our own language corresponds to it; for we expect from a judge, gravity of deportment, and sedate manners. Lean men seldom inspire the confidence which fat men do. “I wish he were fatter,” says Cæsar, of Cassius; for a man who feeds well, and grows fat, has given “hostage to fortune.” Corpulency, like marriage, being “a great impediment either to enterprise or mischief.”[[1]]
There is yet another reason for conceding the ascendancy of the palate over the other organs. The palate and the stomach have had more to do with the establishment of civil liberty than is even suspected by those who have neglected this important study. The custom for magistrates to feed their clients, is as old as the Roman empire, and has been preserved in all civilized countries. Our Saxon and Anglo-Saxon ancestors were accustomed to do every thing important over a dinner; and to that circumstance, as Alderman Walker, of the English metropolis, very justly remarked, must be ascribed the preservation of English liberty, as contradistinguished from that of France. A people, accustomed to civic festivals, will not easily be reduced to slavery. Good cheer enlivens our attachment to the country, enhances patriotism, and calls for those expressions of sentiment which I look upon as the main pillars of liberal institutions. And if public liberty is consolidated by public feastings and Lord Mayors’ dinners in England, where the people only partake of the good cheer, by a liberal construction of the constitutional charter, that is to say, through their legal representatives, how much more conducive to public liberty must be those public dinners in our country, where people enjoy the privilege of assisting in person at the banquet! Instead of hearing the herald proclaim, “Now the Lord Mayor is helping himself to turtle—now the Lord Mayor has commenced upon venison—now the Lord Mayor drinks to the queen!” they themselves eat the turtle, the venison, and drink success to popular governments;—with this difference only, that they have less patriotic cooks—cooks who, in most cases, have scarcely an interest in common with those to whose patriotism they minister. This is radically wrong, and ought to be looked to. If our Fourth of July dinners have somewhat fallen into disrepute with the fashionables, it is, I trust, not from a want of patriotism on their part, but on account of the atrocious manner in which some of them are prepared. Let venison and turtle, or if these be out of season, the best that the market affords abound, and the beau monde of our Atlantic cities will excuse the sentiments for the cook’s sake, and wash them down with Champagne and Madeira!
The custom to invite men whom we respect and honor to a public dinner, is as old as the hills, and ought to be carefully handed down to our children. No higher distinction ought ever to be claimed by our public men, and none granted. Political feasts are the highest stimulants to action I know of—but in order to ensure their success, an act of Congress ought to prohibit set speeches, and impromptus prepared for the occasion. The awkward manner of taking public men by surprise, was strikingly exhibited in the speech of Lord Brougham, at a dinner of the members of the National Institute, which began thus: “Non-accoutumé que je suis à parler en publique,” and extorted some smiles even from the furrowed countenances of the French savants. The reading of written addresses, concealed under the plate during dinner, for the purpose of being let loose after the cloth is removed, is a breach of hospitality, and ought to be voted a nuisance; but the greatest latitude might, without danger to public safety, be allowed in regard to toasts, especially when they refer to the Eagle, who from his royal toughness has nothing to fear from the barbarism of the cooks. By the by, English writers and reviewers need not feel so squeamish about “that Eagle,” as “the British Lion” is quite as tough, if not more so, and when he is finished, there still remains the Unicorn, as a corps de reserve. They have two beasts to our one; neither of which is fit to be exhibited in a drawing-room.
Dinners serve scientific and artistical purposes quite as well as they do political ones. Every learned society of England has its annual meetings, at which a public feast is prepared for its officers and members. Turtle and venison are the only means of bringing the members together, just as the suppers at our Philadelphia Wistar parties season the scientific conversation of our own men of learning, and render their entertainments more attractive and cheerful. Dinners and suppers act as the attraction of cohesion among members of the same family. Why should they not promote a feeling of fraternity among men of science and literature?
The practice of patronizing literary men and artists by dining them, has, it is to be regretted, not yet been generally adopted in this country. In England and France it is quite common; but since the remuneration of artists exceeds all bounds in the latter country, the artists, in turn, invite their patrons. There is no better means of spreading useful information than these interchanges of hospitality. Knowledge in general is dry,[[2]] and would have few votaries if the stomach did not act as interpreter between the learned and the tyro. At table you may bring the most opposite characters together, and they will agree—as long as they are eating—on most subjects, provided they are but half bred. The elective affinity of viands and gravy, mushrooms and truffles, will establish harmony among them, which may last even for an hour after dinner; but at tea you must be careful. All beverages are deceptive, and are rather apt to exhibit differences than to equalize them. A true diplomat will press you to drink; but he will seldom taste any thing but ice water and lemonade.