So sings, or says, Robert Browning in his ditty of the Pied Piper, and it is to be remarked that he was not driven to invent the word "nuncheon" by the necessity of finding a rhyme for "luncheon," for "puncheon" was ready to his hand, and "nuncheon" was not a creation, but an archaism, defined by Johnson as "food eaten between meals." Let no one who perpends the amazing dinners eaten by our forefathers accuse those good men of gluttony. Let us rather bethink ourselves of their early and unsatisfying breakfasts, their lives of strenuous labour, their ignorance of five o'clock tea; and then thank the goodness and the grace which on our birth have smiled, and have given us more frequent meals and less ponderous dinners. Lord John Russell (1792-1878) published anonymously in 1820 a book of Essays and Sketches "by a Gentleman who has left his Lodgings." On the usages of polite society at the time no one was better qualified to speak, for Woburn Abbey was his home, and at Bowood and Holland House he was an habitual guest; and this is his testimony to the dining habits of society: "The great inconvenience of a London life is the late hour of dinner. To pass the day _impransus_ and then to sit down to a great dinner at eight o'clock is entirely against the first dictates of common sense and common stomachs. Women, however, are not so irrational as men, and generally sit down to a substantial luncheon at three or four; if men would do the same, the meal at night might be lightened of many of its weighty dishes and conversation would be no loser." So far, Luncheon (or Nuncheon) would seem to be exclusively a ladies' meal; and yet Dr. Kitchener could not have been prescribing for ladies only when he gave his surprising directions for a luncheon "about twelve," which might "consist of a bit of roasted Poultry, a basin of Beef Tea or Eggs poached or boiled in the shell, Fish plainly dressed, or a Sandwich; stale Bread, and half a pint of good Home-brewed Beer, or Toast and Water, with about one fourth or one-third part of its measure of Wine, of which Port is preferred, or one-seventh of Brandy."