Now, although William Hogarth, now in his thirty-fifth year, was passably virtuous, and I have heard no instance of his indulging in any modern conversation at midnight or other times, to the extent of becoming overtaken in strong drinks—there were plenty of cakes and ale in the Hogarthian philosophy. He was a brisk man, liberal and hospitable in his own house, and not averse from moderate conviviality abroad, sometimes partaking of the nature of the hilarious gambols known as “High Jinks.” Brother, we must die. It needs not the digging Trappist to tell us so. It needs not the moralist with “_Disce mori!_” It needs not the looking-glass that shows us the wrinkled brow and grizzled locks. We must die; and we are gravelled, and worn, and sick, and sorry; and in the night we pray for morning, and in the morning cry out that it were night. But they need not be grim ghosts, those memories of the old pleasant follies and “High Jinks.” They did not all belong to the folly and recklessness of wayward youth. They were jovial and exuberant, and merry and light-hearted; trivial, certainly, and, maybe, undignified as when you, John Kemble, rode the hippopotamus at early dawn among the cabbages in Covent Garden; as when you, grave senator and reverend seignior, danced the Irish jig over the crossed broomsticks; as when you, now stately dowager, then sprightly maid of honour, disguised yourself as a buy-a-broom girl; as when you, grave philosopher, condescended, “on that occasion only,” to lead the donkey that was the Rosinante of a fifth of November “Guy.” But you didn’t do any harm. You didn’t exactly bring your parents’ grey hair with sorrow to the grave when you broke the half-crown’s worth of crockeryware; nor were you ever brought to the pass of biting your mamma’s ear off on the Place de Grève, because she didn’t flay you alive for partaking of apples which you had not precisely acquired according to the “vendors and purchasers” doctrines of wise Lord St. Leonards. I say, that I hope we shall not _all_ be brought to judgment for _all_ the rejoicings of our youth; for the assize would surely be too black, and shuddering Mercy would tear the calendar.