imitate this prudent arrangement, for his appetite at dinner was neither keen nor nice. Breakfast was his chief meal. Before that came, he had gone through the severest part of the day's work, and then he set to w with the zeal of Crabbe's Squire Tovell

'And laid at once a pound upon his plate.'

No foxhunter ever prepared himself for the field by more substantial appliances. His table was always provided, in addition to the usually plentiful delicacies of a Scotch breakfast, with some solid article, on which he did most lusty execution—a round of beef—a pasty, such as made Gil Blas's eyes water-or, most welcome of all, a cold sheep's head, the charms of which primitive dainty he has so gallantly defended against the disparaging sneers of Dr. Johnson and his bear-leader. A huge brown loaf flanked his elbow, and it was placed upon a broad wooden trencher, that he might cut and come again with the bolder knife. Often did the Clerk's coach, commonly called among themselves the lively-which trundled round every morning to pick up the brotherhood, and then deposited them at the proper minute in the Parliament Close-often did this lumbering hackney arrive at his door before he had fully appeased what Homer calls 'the sacred rage of hunger;' and vociferous was the merriment of the learned uncles, when the surprised poet swung forth to join them, with an extemporized sandwich, that looked like a ploughman's luncheon in his hand. But this robust supply would have served him in fact for the day. He never tasted anything more before dinner, and at dinner he ate almost as sparingly as Squire Tovell's niece from the boarding-school

'Who cut the sanguine flesh in frustums fine,

And marvelled much to see the creatures dine.'

The only dishes he was at all fond of were the oldfashioned ones to which he had been accustomed in the days of Saunders Fairford; and which really are excellent dishes,-such, in truth, as Scotland borrowed

from France before Catherine de Medicis brought in her Italian virtuosi to revolutionize the kitchen like the court. Of most of these, I believe, he has in the course of his novels found some opportunity to record his esteem. But, above all, who can forget that his King Jamie, amidst the splendours of Whitehall, thinks himself an ill-used monarch unless his first course includes cockyleekie?

It is a fact, which some philosophers may think worth setting down, that Scott's organization, as to more than one of the senses, was the reverse of exquisite. He had very little of what musicians call an ear; his smell was hardly more delicate. I have seen him stare about, quite unconscious of the cause, when his whole company betrayed their uneasiness at the approach of an over-kept haunch of venison; and neither by the nose or the palate could he distinguish corked wine from sound. He could never tell Madeira from Sherry; nay, an Oriental friend having sent him a butt of sheeraz, when he remembered the circumstance some time afterwards, and called for a bottle to have Sir John Malcolm's opinion of its quality, it turned out that his butler, mistaking the label, had already served up half the binn as sherry. Port he considered as physic he never willingly swallowed more than one glass of it, and was sure to anathematize a second, if offered, by repeating John Home's epigram

'Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,
Old was his mutton, and his claret good;

Let him drink port, the English statesman cried-
He drank the poison, and his spirit died.'

In truth, he liked no wines except sparkling champagne and claret; but even as to this last he was no connoisseur; and sincerely preferred a tumbler of whiskytoddy to the most precious liquid ruby' that ever flowed in the cup of a prince. He rarely took any other potation when quite alone with his family; but at the Sunday board he circulated the champagne briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of claret

each man's fair share afterwards. I should not omit, however, that his Bordeaux was uniformly preceded by a small libation of the genuine mountain dew, which he poured with his own hand, more majorum, for each guest-making use for the purpose of such a multifarious collection of ancient Highland quaighs (little cups of curiously dovetailed wood, inlaid with silver) as no Lowland sideboard but his was ever equipped withbut commonly reserving for himself one that was peculiarly precious in his eyes, as having travelled from Edinburgh to Derby in the canteen of Prince Charlie. This relic had been presented to the wandering Ascanius' by some very careful follower, for its bottom is of glass, that he who quaffed might keep his eye the while upon the dirk hand of his companion.-Life of Sir Walter Scott.

THOMAS CARLYLE

1795-1881

GEORGE FOX

PERHAPS the most remarkable incident in Modern History, says Teufelsdröckh, is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as

in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an honourable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,-was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind: but even amid the boring and hammering, came tones from that far country, came Splendours and Terrors; for this poor Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man; and the Temple of Immensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery to him.

The Clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained Watchers and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with unaffected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 'drink beer and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders of the blind! For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other racketing, held over that spot of God's earth,-if man were but a Patent Digester, and the belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality? Fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leatherparings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher than Etna, had been heaped over that Spirit: but it was a Spirit and would not lie buried there. Through long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free; how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and emerged into the light of Heaven! That Leicester shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or Loretto-Shrine. 'So

bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in,' groaned he, with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, I can neither see nor move: not my own am I, but the World's; and time flies fast, and Heaven is high, and Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of Thought! Why not; what binds me here? Want, want!-Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages under the moon ferry me across into that far Land of Light? Only Meditation can, and devout prayer to God. I will to the woods: the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wildberries feed me; and for clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit of Leather!'

Historical oil-painting, continues Teufelsdröckh, is one of the Arts I never practised; therefore shall I not decide whether this subject were easy of execution on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed to me as if such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, more and more into Day, the Chaotic Night that threatened to engulf him in its hindrances and its horrors were properly the only grandeur there is in History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he spreads-out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous allincluding Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the Prison-ditch within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art he!

Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height: and for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by