Bibulus, host as he is of the educated palate,
who sent again for that dish of quails, treated
after a doctrine expounded to him by the inimitable
Carême himself— the divinest mixture
— that the dish, alack! came to me, with all the
rich matter drained away, and a solitary arid
stump of the bird derelict in the middle? A
bitter trial! The premature falling short of the
green peas is a sore chastening too. See, too,
what a school for noble self-abnegation and
training of the will. Greedy, impatient souls,
rough untamed diners, will fasten on the first
toothsome dish, and spend their whole energies
on the earlier contingent of the feast. Exhausted,
then, and prostrate through this foolish
lack of economy of appetite, they lie there,
spent and incapable, before the battle is half
won. I have seen many such awful instances,
which should be taken to heart by the young
and unwary.

This hints to me to improve the occasion by
setting out in this place a short Irish legend,
which comes in with a singular à propos.

Two Irish judges were, proceeding on that
solemn biennial progress called circuit, through
certain wild districts of the country, and weary
with hanging, and the milder forms of punishment,
found a certain agreeable solace in the
prospect of a grand pastoral dinner, which the
Catholic archbishop of the diocese had fixed for
the following Sunday, in their honour. It is
astonishing what a gratification the judicial mind
found in anticipating this treat, it being well
understood that such archiepiscopal symposia,
though a little in the rough, are based on all that
is sound, substantial, and of the best. No
refinements of cooking were to be looked for,
but there would be ample atonement in the shape
of all that was primest in the range of joint and
fowl and succulent produce of the earth. On
the day appointed, the judicial minds repaired
to the banquet, full of hope and noble aspiration,
and sat down on the archiepiscopal right
and left respectively, flanked by twelve clergymen
of the diocese. The judicial minds were
helped to soup; but, curious to say, a thin,
watery fluid. The fact was, there had been a
miscarriage in the soup; such accidents will
happen; and the delicate culinary tissues will
break down under the strain of a heavy archiepiscopal
dinner. Such are very pardonable, and to be
excused by geuerous minus. Fish? What a
miscarriage in the fish, too. This looks serious.
There was here a carelessness not quite so
excusable. In a fishing country, my lord archbishop,
not far from those prolific streams of the
west, such laches is culpable. But let it pass,
the rest will atone, first cover: a pale-blue fowl,
very leggy and sinewous, unmated, in a
solitude all his own: a melancholy, blighted
bird. Second cover: a dwindled dappled
mixture, undefinable, but which, on private
archiepiscopal information, was discovered to be
calf's head. The judicial minds were now quite
dazed. A small cube of bacon, with some other
light matter, filled in the flanks, and made the
banquet symmetrical. Such blank faces could
not be imagined. From that moment their faith
in archiepiscopal catering was cast down and
shivered to atoms. It was with a melancholy
desperation that one judicial mind, seeing his
hopes thus shipwrecked, sent again for the
calf's head, and made shift to dine off that
delicacy. Remnants of the azure bird, of the
cube of bacon— portions of which did unaccountably
seem to survive the powers of the
twelve clergymen— were carried out, and the field
cleared for a second course. Yet mark what a
second course! Enter first familiar, staggering
under a superb piece of beef, golden in its fat,
unctuous in its juices, which is set down in the
place of honour due to knighted persons. Him
follows a trio of ducklings, redolent, acceptable
to the nostrils, hinting while yet afar off of
exquisite mysteries of stuffing hidden away under
that— is it not called, technically, the skirt?
whom follows lamb— matchless fore-quarter
— tender infant, ward of sheep's chancery, with
other dainties not to be particularised. Ah!
wary twelve clergymen, ye had foreknowledge of
this abnormal dispensation, and barely tickled
the appetite with those earlier delicacies. But
for that luckless judicial mind who had so rashly
leaped at foregone conclusions, who had let, so
to speak, all his apartments to poor unremunerative
lodgers, and was now obliged to turn
away from the door a crowd of profitable tenants,
really desirable persons, how was it with him?
Ill-omened calf's head!

Neither can I join in stigmatising these barbaric
feasts, where those of one sex exclusively
meet together, and are joyous. They have sent
their squaws up-stairs, and the souls of the
chieftains are glad. Why should not those who
have laboured all day long in the heats of the
parliament and the courts where law is fought
for, and who have now returned home with
strings of scalps at their waist— why should
not they meet together, and read and unfold to
each other their prowess and deeds of glory? I
like this herding together in a strong band— say
twenty-two of the "worthier blood," as Mr.
Justice Blackstone puts it— this agglomeration
of black coats, this rank and file of the one dark
uniform. I observe always that there is a
broader freedom, less of that civilised restraint
which the company of the finer clay of mankind
induces. Where note, too, that the most incorrigible
vituperators of these feasts of the heroes
are to be found among that excluded sex—
among the heroes' own wives, sisters, mothers,
and cousins. In such quarters language unbecomingly
strong is used in reference to these
harmless revels. Is this to be set to the account
of an unworthy jealousy, this too rigid enforcement
of a dining Salic law, or to a return home
of the noisy truants far in the night, stimulated
by rare and costly fluids, and inconveniently
noisy?— or could it be, if a broader reciprocity
should spring up, and they were privileged to
meet in a corresponding revelry, this practice
would meet with a gentler toleration? It is hard
to disentangle the mingled yarn of motives
twisted in female bosoms. What I relish in it