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 dis covered, 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 tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he 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 burnt 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 handled it, and they all handled it; and taste how nice the burnt pig eats." The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He 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 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 a 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. 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 burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as 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 given,-to 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 town-house 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 as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse 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 porkersthings between pig and pork-those hobbydehoys-but a young and tender sucklingunder a moon old-guiltless as yet of the sty -with no original speck of the amor immunditia, 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. of filthy conversation-from these sins he is Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 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 epicureand 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-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-and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiledbut what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument! There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, wellwatched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is Pig-let me speak his praise-is no less well called the very teeth are invited to their provocative of the appetite, than he is satisshare of the pleasure at this banquet in over-factory to the criticalness of the censorious coming the coy, brittle resistance-with the palate. The strong man may batten on him, adhesive oleaginous-O call it not fat! but and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 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 animal-wallowing in all manner 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. say, 66 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 "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 plum-cake, 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 of self-denial, and the very coxcombry 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 then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I-I myself, and not another-would eat her nice cake-and what should I say to her the next time I saw her-how naughty I was to part with her pretty 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 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 alms giving, 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 imposter. 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 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. 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. A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE, As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in noting down the infirmities of Married People, to console myself for those superior pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by remaining as I am. I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives ever made any great impression upon me, or had much tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions, which I took up long ago upon more substantial considerations. What oftenest offends me at the houses of married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a different description;— it is that they are too loving. Not too loving neither: that does not explain my meaning. Besides, why should that offend me? The very act of separating themselves from the rest of the world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each other's society, implies that they prefer one another to all the world. thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces. Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a newmarried couple,—in that of the lady particularly it tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this world: that you can have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none: nor wishes either, perhaps; but this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted, not expressed. But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment without being made to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, that you The excessive airs which those people give are not the object of this preference. Now themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unthere are some things which give no offence, married people, would be more offensive if they while implied or taken for granted merely; were less irrational. We will allow them to but expressed, there is much offence in them. understand the mysteries belonging to their If a man were to accost the first homely-own craft better than we, who have not had featured or plain-dressed young woman of the happiness to be made free of the comhis acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome or rich enough for him, and he could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access and opportunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this as clearly as if it were put into words; but no reasonable young woman would think of making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man, -the lady's choice. It is enough that I know I am not I do not want this perpetual reminding. The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made sufficiently mortifying; but these admit of a palliative. The knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may accidentally improve me; and in the rich man's houses and pictures,-his parks and gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness has none of these palliatives: it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, unqualified insult. pany: but their arrogance is not content within these limits. If a single person presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an incompetent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaintance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her condition above a fortnight before, in a question on which I had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the properest mode of breeding oysters for the London market, had the assurance to ask with a sneer, how such an old Bachelor as I could pretend to know anything about such matters! But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which these creatures give themselves when they come, as they generally do, to have children. When I consider how little of a rarity children are, that every street and blind alley swarms with them,— that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance,—that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains,-how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c.—I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so common Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as possible, that their less favoured neighbours, seeing little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to question I do not advert to the insolent merit which the right. But these married monopolists they assume with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. But why amiable or unamiable per se; I must love or we, who are not their natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, and incense,-our tribute and homage of admiration,—I do not see. hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and to be "Like as the arrows in the hand of the loved or hated accordingly: they stand with giant, even so are the young children: " SO me upon their own stock, as much as men says the excellent office in our Prayer-book and women do. Oh! but you will say, sure appointed for the churching of women. it is an attractive age, there is something! "Happy is the man that hath his quiver full in the tender years of infancy that of itself of them :" So say I; but then don't let him charms us? That is the very reason why I discharge his quiver upon us that are weapon- am more nice about them. I know that a less; let them be arrows, but not to gall sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, and stick us. I have generally observed that not even excepting the delicate creatures these arrows are double-headed: they have which bear them; but the prettier the kind two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it other. As for instance, where you come into should be pretty of its kind. One daisy a house which is full of children, if you differs not much from another in glory; but happen to take no notice of them (you are a violet should look and smell the daintiest. thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn-I was always rather squeamish in my a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, if you find them more than usually engaging, if you are taken with their pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp and play with them, some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending them out of the room; they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like children. With one or other of these folks the arrow is sure to hit you. I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying with their brats, if it gives them any pain; but I think it unreasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see no occasion, to love a whole family, perhaps eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately, to love all the pretty dears, because children are so engaging! women and children. But this is not the worst: one must be admitted into their familiarity at least, before they can complain of inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriageif you did not come in on the wife's side—if you did not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on,-look about you-your tenure is precarious-before a twelvemonth shall roll over your head, you shall find your old friend gradually grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence after the period of his I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love marriage. With some limitations, they can my dog" that is not always so very practi- endure that; but that the good man should cable, particularly if the dog be set upon you have dared to enter into a solemn league of to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a friendship in which they were not consulted, dog, or a lesser thing-any inanimate sub- though it happened before they knew him, stance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a-before they that are now man and wife tree, or the place where we last parted when ever met,-this is intolerable to them. Every my friend went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and anything that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children have a real character, and an essential being of themselves: they are long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, |