illustrating his proposition by one of those graphic sketches which give a distinctive life to Horace's Satires. "There is Avidienus, to whom, like a burr, Sticks the name he was righteously dubbed by, of 'Cur,' Eats beechmast and olives five years old, at least, And even when he's robed all in white for a feast On his marriage or birth day, or some other very High festival day, when one likes to be merry, What wine from the chill of his cellar emerges-- 'Tis a drop at the best--has the flavour of verjuice; While from a huge cruet his own sparing hand On his coleworts drops oil which no mortal can stand, So utterly loathsome and rancid in smell, it Defies his stale vinegar even to quell it." Let what you have he simple, the best of its kind, whatever that may be, and served in the best style. And now learn, continues the rustic sage, "In what way and how greatly you'll gain By using a diet both sparing and plain. First, your health will be good; for you readily can Believe how much mischief is done to a man By a great mass of dishes,--remembering that Plain fare of old times, and how lightly it sat. But the moment you mingle up boiled with roast meat, And shellfish with thrushes, what tasted so sweet Will be turned into bile, and ferment, not digest, in Your stomach exciting a tumult intestine. Mark, from a bewildering dinner how pale Every man rises up! Nor is this all they ail, For the body, weighed down by its last night's excesses, To its own wretched level the mind, too, depresses, And to earth chains that spark of the essence divine; While he, that's content on plain viands to dine, Sleeps off his fatigues without effort, then gay As a lark rises up to the tasks of the day. Yet he on occasion will find himself able To enjoy without hurt a more liberal table, Say, on festival days, that come round with the year, Or when his strength's low, and cries out for good cheer, Or when, as years gather, his age must be nursed With more delicate care than he wanted at first. But for you, when ill health or old age shall befall, Where's the luxury left, the relief within call, Which has not been forestalled in the days of your prime, When you scoffed, in your strength, at the inroads of time? "'Keep your boar till it's rank!' said our sires; which arose, I am confident, not from their having no nose, But more from the notion that some of their best Should be kept in reserve for the chance of a guest: And though, ere he came, it grew stale on the shelf, This was better than eating all up by one's self. Oh, would I had only on earth found a place In the days of that noble heroic old race!" So much as a question of mere health and good feeling. But now our moralist appeals to higher considerations:--