Have we succeeded in drinking more than they drank in the days of ignorance and barbarism--old style? Alexander, the doubtful friend of the fair Hephæstion, was no small drinker, although there was no _Journal des Connaissances Utiles_ in his day, and I am unable to conceive how any utilitarian, unless he should become oïnopic and more puffed out than the younger Lepeintre or a hippopotamus, could drain the great beaker which he called Hercules' cup. The Maréchal de Bassompierre, who emptied his long boot to the health of the Thirteen Cantons, seems to me a singularly estimable personage in his way and very hard to improve upon. What economist will enlarge our stomachs so that they will hold as many beefsteaks as the late Milo of Crotona, who ate an ox? The bill of fare at Véfour's Café Anglais, or at any other culinary celebrity's that you choose, seems to me very ill-supplied and commonplace compared to the menu of Trimalcion's dinner.--At whose table in these days are a sow and her twelve shoats served on a single platter? Who has eaten muræna and lampreys fattened on man? Do you really think that Brillat-Savarin has improved upon Apicius? Could Vitellius's big tripe-man find at Chevet's the wherewithal to fill his famous Minerva's shield with pheasants' and peacocks' brains, tongues of flamingoes and scarus livers?--The oysters you eat at the Rocher de Cancale are such a great delicacy compared with the oysters of Lucrin, for which a lake was made expressly.--The little establishments in the suburbs kept by the marquises of the Regency were wretched little boxes, if we compare them with the villas of the Roman patricians at Baiæ, Capri, and Tibur. The Cyclopean splendor of the great voluptuaries who erected everlasting monuments for a day's pleasure should cause us to fall flat on our faces before the genius of antiquity and erase forever from our dictionaries the word _perfectibility._