? accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him with at the suggestion of B, the mild rector of mock humility. None jostle with him for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No realthy neighbour secketh to eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and true greatness of my mind, to be a beggar. Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put on court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearances. The ups and downs of the world concern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay. The price of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not expected to become bail or surety for any one. No man troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He is the only free man in the universe. No The mendicants of this great city were so many of her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than I could the cries of London. corner of a street is complete without them. They are as indispensable as the ballad singer; and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as the signs of old London. They were the standing morals, emblems, mementos, dial-mottos, the 'spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry "Look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there." Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of Lincoln's-Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful dog guide at their feet, whither are they fled? or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome air and sunwarmth? immersed between four walls, in what withering poorhouse do they endure the penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the dropped halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger? Where hang their useless staves? and who will farm their dogs? Have the overseers of St L caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks, and dropped into the Thames, Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most classical, and at the same time, most English of the Latinists! who has treated of this human and quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the sweetest of his poems, the "Epitaphium in Canem," or "Dog's Epitaph." Reader, peruse it; and say, if customary sights, which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis. "Pauperis hic Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectæ, Ploravit nec frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter, Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, His guide and guard: nor, while my service lasted, I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood; a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; for the accident, which brought him low, took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antæus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a centaur, from which the horsehalf had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body-portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poorhouse, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of correction. Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather a salutary and a touching object, to the passers-by in a great city? Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for evergaping curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights-endless sights-is a great city; or for what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not Natura, indeed, but) Accidentium? What if in forty-and-two years' going about, the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumour ran) of a few hundreds-whom had he injured?-whom had he imposed upon? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven -shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion-he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples, over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a House of Commons' committee-was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whippingpost, and is inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of noctural orgies which he has been slandered with-a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond? There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed to have sat down at the cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite, too, for a companionable symbol. Age, thou hast lost thy breed." 66 Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in the bank was surprised with the announcement of a five hundred pound legacy, left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems that, in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or some village thereabouts), where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice-for the last twenty years-to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sat begging alms by the way-side, in the borough. The good old beggar recognised his daily benefactor by the voice only; and, when he died, left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half-acentury perhaps in the accumulating) to his old bank friend. Was this a story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind?-or not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble gratitude upon the other? I sometimes wish I had been that bank clerk. I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun. Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him? Perhaps I had no small change. Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition, imposture-give, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like this bank clerk) entertained angels. Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit looks and mumping tones, think them players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not. tory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burned his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted-crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those re could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued. "You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burned me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what-what have you got there, I say?" "O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats." A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M, was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius, in the second chapter of his "Mundane Mutations," where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally, the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roast-mote quarters. His father might lay on, but he ing, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as bis manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bobo, a great lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from? not from the burnt cottage-he had smelt that smell before; indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premoni | He The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste-O Lord!"-with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke. Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter. as setting houses on fire (especially in these days could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excase might be found in ROAST PIG. Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most delicate |-princeps obsoniorum. I speak not of your grown porkers-things between pig and pork-those hobbydehoys-but a young and tender suckling-under a moon old 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 exterior tegument! Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burned down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad-guiltless as yet or the sty-with no original day, others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled it; and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever givento the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, | strangers, reporters, and all present-without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision and when the court was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his lordship's townhouse was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fire in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among mankind. Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment There is no flavour comparable, I will con tend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is well calledthe 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 ambrosian 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 animalwallowing in all manner of filthy conversationfrom these sins he is happily snatched away "Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade; Death came with timely care-" his memory is odoriferous-no clown curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon -no coalheaver 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. Pine-apple 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 I myself, and not another, would eat her nice cake, and what should I say to her the next time I saw ner-how naughty I was to part with her pretty present! and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the -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-pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing 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. 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 spirit of almsgiving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness; and above all I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor. Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto. I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St Omer's, 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 flaggellationem 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. 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, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door 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 my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon 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 holiday 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 grey-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 A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, nature-a piece of impertinent correspondency, schoolboy-like, I made him a present of-the -an odious approximation,—a haunting conwhole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, science,-a preposterous shadow, lengthening in as one is on such occasions, with a sweet sooth- the noontide of our prosperity,-an unwelcome ing of self-satisfaction; but before I had got to remembrancer,-a perpetually recurring mortifithe end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, cation,-a drain on your purse,-a more intolerand I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful able dun upon your pride,-a drawback upon I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her success,-a rebuke to your rising,—a stain in your good gift away to a stranger that I had never blood, a blot on your 'scutcheon,- a rent in seen before, and who might be a bad man for your garment,-a death's-head at your banquet, aught I knew; and then I thought of the plea-Agathocles' pot,-a Mordecai in your gate,-a sure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I | Lazarus at your door,—a lion in your path,—a 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. POOR RELATIONS. |