Turks, and other people who have succeeded to the stations and the habits of the ancients, do so at this day. The Roman, therefore, who saw no joke in sitting round a table in the dark, went off to bed as the darkness began. Everybody did so. Old Numa Pompilius himself was obliged to trundle off in the dusk. Tarquinius might be a very superb fellow; but I doubt whether he ever saw a farthing rushlight. And, though it may be thought that plots and conspiracies would flourish in such a city of darkness, it is to be considered that the conspirators themselves had no more candles than honest men: both parties were in the dark. Being up, then, and stirring not long after the lark, what mischief did the Roman go about first? Now-a-days he would have taken a pipe or a cigar. But, alas for the ignorance of the poor heathen creatures! they had neither one nor the other. In this point, I must tax our mother Earth with being really too stingy. In the case of the candles I approve of her parsimony. Much mischief is brewed by candle-light. But it was coming it too strong to allow no tobacco. Many a wild fellow in Rome, your Gracchi, Syllas, Catilines, would not have played "h- and Tommy" in the way they did if they could have soothed their angry stomachs with a cigar: a pipe has intercepted many an evil scheme. But the thing is past helping now. At Rome you must do as "they does" at Rome. So, after shaving (supposing the age of the Barbati to be past), what is the first business that our Roman will undertake? Forty to one he is a poor man, born to look upwards to his fellowmen, and not to look down upon anybody but slaves. He goes, therefore, to the palace of some grandee, some topsawyer of the senatorian order. This great man, for all his greatness, has turned out even sooner than himself. For he candles; and, I may add, fire. The five heads of human expenditure are-1, Food; 2, Shelter; 3, Clothing; 4, Fuel; 5. Light. All were pitched on a lower scale in the Pagan era; and the two last were almost banished from ancient housekeeping. What a great relief this must have been to our good mother the Earth! who at first was obliged to request of her children that they would settle round the Mediterranean. She could not even afford them water, unless they would come and fetch it themselves out of a common tank or cistern. also has had no candles and no cigars ; and he well knows that, before the sun looks into his portals, all his halls will be overflowing and buzzing with the matin susurrus of courtiers -the ". 'mane salutantes." It is as much as his popularity is worth to absent himself, or to keep people waiting. But surely, the reader may think, this poor man he might keep waiting. No, he might not; for, though poor, being a citizen, the man is a gentleman. That was the consequence of keeping slaves. Wherever there is a class of slaves, he that enjoys the jus suffragii (no matter how poor) is a gentleman. The true Latin word for a gentleman is ingenuus,—a freeman and the son of a freeman. : Yet even here there were distinctions. Under the Emperors, the courtiers were divided into two classes with respect to the superior class, it was said of the sovereignthat he saw them (" videbat "); with respect to the otherthat he was seen ("videbatur"). Even Plutarch mentions it as a common boast in his times, ἡμας ειδεν ὁ βασιλευς Cæsar is in the habit of seeing me; or, as a common plea for evading a suit, ἑτερους δρᾳ μαλλον—I am sorry to say he is more inclined to look upon others. And this usage derived itself (mark that well!) from the Republican era. The aulic spirit was propagated by the Empire, but from a Republican root. Having paid his court, you will suppose that our friend comes home to breakfast. Not at all: no such discovery as "breakfast" had then been made: breakfast was not invented for many centuries after that. I have always admired, and always shall admire, as the very best of all human stories, Charles Lamb's account of roast-pork, and its traditional origin in China. Ching Ping, it seems, had suffered his father's house to be burned down the outhouses were burned along with the house; and in one of these the 1 "The mane salutantes" :-There can be no doubt that the levees of modern princes and ministers have been inherited from this ancient usage of Rome: one which belonged to Rome Republican, as well as Rome Imperial. The fiction in our modern practice is that we wait upon the lever, or rising of the prince. In France, at one era, this fiction was realised: the courtiers did really attend the king's dressing. And, as to the queen, even up to the Revolution, Marie Antoinette gave audience at her toilette. pigs, by accident, were roasted to a turn. Memorable were the results for all future China and future civilisation. Ping, who (like all China beside) had hitherto eaten his pig raw, now for the first time tasted it in a state of torrefaction. Of course he made his peace with his father by a part (tradition says a leg) of the new dish. The father was so astounded with the discovery that he burned his house down once a-year for the sake of coming at an annual banquet of roast pig. A curious prying sort of fellow, one Chang Pang, got to know of this. He also burned down a house with a pig in it, and had his eyes opened. The secret was ill kept; the discovery spread; many great conversions were made; houses were blazing in every part of the Celestial Empire. The insurance offices took the matter up. One Chong Pong, detected in the very act of shutting up a pig in his drawingroom, and then firing a train, was indicted on a charge of arson. The chief justice of Peking, on that occasion, requested an officer of the court to hand him up a piece of the roast pig, the corpus delicti: pure curiosity it was, liberal curiosity, that led him to taste; but within two days after, it was observed, says Lamb, that his lordship's town-house was on fire. In short, all China apostatised to the new faith; and it was not until some centuries had passed that a man of prodigious genius arose-viz. Chung Pung-who established the second era in the history of roast pig by showing that it could be had without burning down a house. No such genius had yet arisen in Rome. Breakfast was not suspected. No prophecy, no type of breakfast, had been published. In fact, it took as much time and research to arrive at that great discovery as at the Copernican system. True it is, reader, that you have heard of such a word as jentaculum; and your dictionary translates that old heathen word by the Christian word breakfast. But dictionaries are dull deceivers. Between jentaculum and breakfast the differences are as wide as between a horse-chestnut and a chestnut horse, differences in the time when, in the place where, in the manner how, but pre-eminently in the thing which. Galen is a good authority upon such a subject, since, if (like other Pagans) he ate no breakfast himself, in some sense he may be called the cause of breakfast to other 66 men, by treating of those things which could safely be taken upon an empty stomach. As to the time, he (like many other authors) says, περι τριτην, ή (το μακροτερον) περι TεтаρTην, about the third, or at farthest about the fourth hour and so exact is he that he assumes the day to lie exactly between six and six o'clock, and to be divided into thirteen equal portions. So the time will be a few minutes before nine, or a few minutes before ten, in the forenoon. That seems fair enough. But it is not time in respect to its location that we are concerned with, so much as time in respect to its duration. Now, heaps of authorities take it for granted that you are not to sit down-you are to stand; and, as to the place, that any place will do—“any corner of the Forum," says Galen, any corner that you fancy" ; which is like referring a man for his salle-à-manger to Westminster Hall or Fleet Street. Augustus, in a letter still surviving, tells us that he jentabat, or took his jentaculum, in his carriage: sometimes in a wheel carriage (in essedo), sometimes in a litter or palanquin (in lectica). This careless and disorderly way as to time and place, and other circumstances of haste, sufficiently indicate the quality of the meal you are to expect. Already you are sagacious of your quarry from so far." Not that we would presume, excellent reader, to liken you to death, or to insinuate that you are a grim feature." But would it not make a saint "grim" to hear of such preparations for the morning meal? And then to hear of such consummations as panis siccus, dry bread; or (if the learned reader thinks it will taste better in Greek) aproS Enpos! And what may this word dry happen to mean? "Does it mean stale?" says Salmasius. "Shall we suppose," says he, in querulous words, "molli et recenti opponi," that it is placed in antithesis to soft and new bread, what English sailors call "soft tommy"? and from that antithesis conclude it to be "durum et non recens coctum, eoque sicciorem"? hard and stale, and in that proportion more arid? Not quite so bad as that, we hope. Or again- "siccum pro biscocto, ut hodie vocamus, sumemus?" 1 By hodie Salmasius means 66 : 1 "Or again, siccum pro biscocto, ut hodie vocamus, sumemus?' It is odd enough that a scholar so complete as Salmasius, whom nothing ever escapes, should have overlooked so obvious an alternative as that amongst his countrymen of France, where biscoctus is verbatim reproduced in the word bis (twice) cuit (baked); whence our own biscuit. Biscuit might do very well, could we be sure that it was cabin biscuit: but Salmasius argues that in this case he takes it to mean "buccellatum, qui est panis nauticus"; that is, the ship company's biscuit, broken with a sledge-hammer. In Greek, for the benefit again of the learned reader, it is termed Supos, indicating that it has passed twice under the action of fire. "Well," you say, 66 no matter if it had passed through the fires of Moloch; only let us have this biscuit, such as it is.” In good faith, then, fasting reader, you are not likely to see much more than you have seen. It is a very Barmecide feast, we do assure you—this same "jentaculum"; at which abstinence and patience are much more exercised than the teeth faith and hope are the chief graces cultivated, together with that species of the magnificum which is founded on the ignotum. Even this biscuit was allowed in the most limited quantities; for which reason it is that the Greeks called this apology for a meal by the name of βουκκισμος, a word formed (as many words were in the Post-Augustan ages) from a Latin word-viz. buccea, a mouthful; not literally such, but so much as a polished man could allow himself to put into his mouth at once. "We took a mouthful," says Sir William Waller, the Parliamentary General- -"took a mouthful; paid our reckoning; mounted; and were off." But there Sir William means, by his plausible "mouthful," something very much beyond either nine or nineteen ordinary quantities of that denomination, whereas the Roman " "jentaculum was literally such; and, accordingly, one of the varieties under which the ancient vocabularies express this model of evanescent quantities is gustatio, a mere tasting; and again, it is called by another variety gustus, a mere taste (whence comes the old French word gouster, for a refection or luncheon, and then, by the usual suppression of the s, gouter). Speaking of his uncle, Pliny the Younger says, "Post solem plerumque "lavabatur: deinde gustabat; dormiebat minimum; mox, quasi alio die, studebat in cœnæ tempus": "After taking of siccus in the sense of being without opsonium,-Scottice, without "kitchen," |