"Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole -Ubi est ille reporter?

Et responsum est cum cachinno-Non est inventus."

CHORUS.

"Deinde iteratum est ab omnibus, cum cachinnatione undulante-Non est inventus."

Toad-in-the-hole, I ought to mention, about nine years before, when an express from Edinburgh brought him the earliest intelligence of the Burkeand-Hare revolution in the art, went mad upon the spot; and, instead of a pension to the express for even one life, or a knighthood, endeavoured to burke him; in consequence of which he was put into a strait waistcoat. And that was the reason we had no dinner then. But now all of us were alive and kicking, strait-waistcoaters and others; in fact, not one absentee was reported upon the entire roll. There were also many foreign amateurs present.

Dinner being over, and the cloth drawn, there was a general call made for the new glee of Non est inventus; but, as this would have interfered with the requisite gravity of the company during the earlier toasts, I overruled the call. After the national toasts had been given, the first official toast of the day was-The Old Man of the Mountains drunk in solemn silence.

Toad-in-the-hole returned thanks in a neat speech. He likened himself to the Old Man of the Mountains, in a few brief allusions, that made the com.. pany absolutely yell with laughter; and he concluded with giving the health of

Mr Von Hammer, with many thanks to him for his learned History of the Old Man and his subjects the Assassins.

Upon this I rose and said, that doubtless most of the company were aware of the distinguished place assigned by orientalists to the very learned Turkish scholar Von Hammer the Austrian; that he had made the profoundest researches into our art as connected with those early and eminent artists the Syrian assassins in the period of the Crusaders; that his work had been for several years deposited, as a rare treasure of art, in the library of the Club. Even the author's name, gentlemen, pointed him out as the historian of our art-Von Hammer

"Yes, yes," interrupted Toad-in

the-hole, who never can sit still— "Yes, yes, Von Hammer-he's the man for a malleus hæreticorum: think rightly of our art, or he's the man to tickle your catastrophes. You all know what consideration Williams bestowed on the hammer, or the ship carpenter's mallet, which is the same thing. Gentlemen, I give you another great hammer-Charles the Hammer, the Marteau, or, in old French, the Martel - he hammered the Saracens till they were all as dead as door-nails :-he did, believe

me.

"Charles Martel, with all the honours."

But the explosion of Toad-in-thehole, together with the uproarious cheers for the grandpapa of Charlemagne, had now made the company unmanageable. The orchestra was again challenged with shouts the stormiest for the new glee. I made again a powerful effort to overrule the challenge. I might as well have talked to the winds. I foresaw a tempestuous evening; and I ordered myself to be strengthened with three waiters on each side; the vice-president with as many. Symptoms of unruly enthusiasm were beginning to show out; and I own that I myself was considerably excited as the orchestra opened with its storm of music, and the impassioned glee began-" Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole- Ubi est ille Reporter?" And the frenzy of the passion became absolutely convulsing, as the full chorus fell in-" Et iteratum est ab omnibus—Non est inventus.'

By this time I saw how things were going: wine and music were making most of the amateurs wild. Particularly Toad-in-the-hole, though considerably above a hundred years old, was getting as vicious as a young leopard. It was a fixed impression with the company that he had murdered the reporter in the year 1812; since which time (viz. twenty-six years)" ille reporter" had been constantly reported

66

non est inventus." Consequently, the glee about himself, which of itself was most tumultuous and jubilant, carried him off his feet. Like the famous choral songs amongst the citizens of Abdera, nobody could hear it without a contagious desire for falling back into the agitating music of "Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole," &c.

I en

joined vigilance upon my assessors, and the business of the evening proceeded.

The next toast was-The Jewish Sicarii.

Upon which I made the following explanation to the company :-" Gentlemen, I am sure it will interest you all to hear that the assassins, ancient as they were, had a race of predecessors in the very same country. All over Syria, but particularly in Palestine, during the early years of the Emperor Nero, there was a band of murderers, who prosecuted their studies in a very novel manner. They did not practise in the night-time, or in lonely places; but justly considering that great crowds are in themselves a sort of darkness by means of the dense pressure and the impossibility of finding out who it was that gave the blow, they mingled with mobs everywhere; particularly at the great paschal feast in Jerusalem; where they actually had the audacity, as Josephus assures us, to press into the temple, and whom should they choose for operating upon but Jonathan himself, the Pontifex Maximus ? They murdered him, gentlemen, as beautifully as if they had had him alone on a moonless night in a dark lane. And when it was asked, who was the murderer, and where he was

"Why, then, it was answered," interrupted Toad-in-the-hole, "non est inventus." And then, in spite of all I could do or say, the orchestra opened, and the whole company began "Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole Ubi est ille Sicarius? Et responsum

est ab omnibus-Non est inventus."

When the tempestuous chorus had subsided, I began again :-" Gentlemen, you will find a very circumstantial account of the Sicarii in at least three different parts of Josephus; once in Book XX. sect. v. c. 8, of his Antiquities; once in Book I. of his Wars: but in sect. 10 of the chapter first cited you will find a particular description of their tooling. This is what he says- They tooled with small seymetars not much different from the Persian acinaca, but more curved, and for all the world most like

the Roman sickles or sicæ.' It is pérfectly magnificent, gentlemen, to hear the sequel of their history. Perhaps the only case on record where a regular army of murderers was assembled, a justus exercitus, was in the case of these Sicarii. They mustered in such strength in the wilderness, that Festus himself was obliged to march against them with the Roman legionary force."

Upon which Toad-in-the-hole, that cursed interrupter, broke out a-singing-"Et interrogatum est à Toad-inthe-hole-Ubi est ille exercitus? Et responsum est ab omnibus-Non est inventus."

"No, no, Toad-you are wrong for once that army was found, and was all cut to pieces in the desert. Heavens, gentlemen, what a sublime picture! The Roman legions - the wilderness-Jerusalem in the distance -an army of murderers in the foreground!”

Mr R., a member, now gave the next toast." To the further improvement of Tooling, and thanks to the Committee for their services.”

*

Mr L., on behalf of the Committee who had reported on that subject, returned thanks. He made an interesting extract from the Report, by which it appeared how very much stress had been laid formerly on the mode of Tooling by the Fathers, both Greek and Latin. In confirmation of this pleasing fact, he made a very striking statement in reference to the earliest work of antediluvian art. Father Mersenne, that learned Roman Catholic, in page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one of his operose Commentary on Genesis, mentions, on the authority of several Rabbis, that the quarrel of Cain with Abel was about a young woman; that, by various accounts, Cain had tooled with his teeth, [Abelem fuisse morsibus dilaceratum à Cain ;] by many others, with the jaw-bone of an ass; which is the tooling adopted by most painters. But it is pleasing to the mind of sensibility to know that, as science expanded, sounder views were adopted. One author contends for a pitchfork, St Chrysostom for a sword, Irenæus

hedging-bill. This last writer delivers

his opinion thus:

'Frater, probatæ sanctitatis æmulus, Germana curvo colla frangit sarculo:"

i. e. his brother, jealous of his attested sanctity, fractures his brotherly throat with a curved hedging-bill. "All which is respectfully submitted by your Committee, not so much as decisive of the question, (for it is not,) but in order to impress upon the youthful mind the importance which has ever been attached to the quality of the tooling by such men as Chrysostom and Irenæus."

"Dang Irenæus!" said Toad-inthe-hole, who now rose impatiently to give the next toast:-" Our Irish friends-and a speedy revolution in their mode of Tooling, as well as every thing else connected with the art!"

we say,

"Gentlemen, I'll tell you the plain truth. Every day of the year we take up a paper, we read the opening of a murder. We say, this is good this is charming-this is excellent! But, behold you! scarcely have we read a little farther before the word Tipperary or Ballina-something betrays the Irish manufacture. Instantly we loathe it we call to the waiter; Waiter, take away this paper; send it out of the house; it is absolutely offensive to all just taste.' I appeal to every man whether, on finding a murder (otherwise perhaps promising enough) to be Irish, he does not feel himself as much insulted as when Madeira being ordered he finds it to be Cape; or when, taking up what he believes to be a mushroom, it turns out what children call a toadstool. Tithes, politics, or something wrong in principle, vitiate every Irish murder. Gentlemen, this must be reformed, or Ireland will not be a land to live in; at least, if we do live there, we must import all our murders, that's clear.' Toad-in-the-hole sat down growling with suppressed wrath, and the universal "Hear, hear!" sufficiently showed that he spoke the ge neral feeling.

The next toast was-" The sublime epoch of Burkism and Harism!"

This was drunk with enthusiasm; and one of the members, who spoke to the question, made a very curious communication to the company :

a pure invention of our own times : and in fact no Pancirollus has ever enumerated this branch of art when writing de rebus deperditis. Still I have ascertained that the essential principle of the art was known to the ancients, although, like the art of painting upon glass, of making the myrrhine cups, &c., it was lost in the dark ages for want of encouragement. In the famous collection of Greek epigrams made by Planudes is one upon a very charming little case of Burkism: it is a perfect little gem of art. The epigram itself I cannot lay my hand upon at this moment: but the following is an abstract of it by Salmasius, as I find it in his notes on Vopiscus: Est et elegans epigramma Lucilii, (well he might call it 'elegans!') ubi medicus et pollinetor de compacto sic egerunt, ut medicus ægros omnes curæ suæ commissos occideret'-this was the basis of the contract, you see, that on the one part the doctor for himself and his assigns doth undertake and contract duly and truly to murder all the patients committed to his charge: but why? There lies the beauty of the case- Et ut pollinctori amico suo traderet pollingendos.' The pollinetor, you are aware, was a person whose business it was to dress and prepare dead bodies for burial. The original ground of the transaction appears to have been sentimental: he was my friend,' says the murderous doctor

he was dear to me,' in speaking of the pollinctor. But the law, gentlemen, is stern and harsh: the law will not hear of these tender motives: to sustain a contract of this nature in law, it is essential that a consideration' should be given. Now, what was the consideration? For thus far all is on the side of the pollinctor: he will be well paid for his services; but meantime, the generous, the nobleminded doctor, gets nothing. What was the little consideration, again, I ask, which the law would insist on the doctor's taking? You shall hear:

Et ut pollinctor vicissim reλaμõvas quos furabatur de pollinctione mortuorum medico mitteret doni ad alliganda vulnera eorum quòs curabat.' Now, the case is clear: the whole went on a principle of reciprocity which would have kept up the trade for ever. The doctor was also a sur

geon he could not murder all his patients: some of the surgical patients must be retained intact; re infectâ. For these he wanted linen bandages. But unhappily the Romans wore woollen, on which account they bathed so often. Meantime, there was linen to be had in Rome: but it was mon. strously dear and the riμãves or linen swathing baudages in which superstition obliged them to bind up corpses, would answer capitally for the surgeon. The doctor, therefore, contracts to furnish his friend with a constant succession of corpses, provided, and be it understood always, that his said friend in return should supply him with one-half of the articles he would receive from the friends of the parties murdered or to be murdered. The doctor invariably recommended his invaluable friend the pollinctor, (whom let us call the undertaker ;) the undertaker, with equal regard to the sacred rights of friendship, uniformly recommended the doctor. Like Pylades and Orestes, they were models of a perfect friendship: in their lives they were lovely; and on the gallows, it is to be hoped, they were not divided.

"Gentlemen, it makes me laugh hor. ribly when I think of those two friends drawing and redrawing on each other: Pollinctor in account with Doctor, debtor by sixteen corpses; creditor by forty-five bandages, two of which damaged.' Their names unfortunately are lost; but I conceive they must have been Quintus Burkius and Publius Harius. By the way, gentlemen, has anybody heard lately of Hare? I understand he is comfortably settled in

At length came the toast of the day
Thugdom in all its branches.

The speeches attempted at this crisis of the Dinner were past all counting. But the applause was so furious, the music so stormy, and the crashing of glasses so incessant, from the general resolution never again to drink an inferior toast from the same glass, that my power is not equal to the task of reporting. Besides which, Toad-inthe-hole now became quite ungovernable. He kept firing pistols in every direction; sent his servant for a blunderbuss, and talked of loading with ball-cartridge. We conceived that his former madness had returned at the mention of Burke and Hare; or, that being again weary of life, he had resolved to go off in a general massacre. This we could not think of allowing it became indispensable, therefore, to kick him out, which we did with universal consent, the whole company lending their toes uno pede, as I may say, though pitying his grey hairs and his angelic smile. During the operation the orchestra poured in their old chorus. The universal company sang, and (what surprised us most of all) Toad-in-the-hole joined us furiously in singing—

τελαμώνας,

Εις επιδεσμεύειν πεμπε φιλῳ Κρατεμ. Τον δ' απαμειβομένος Κρατέας, εις ενταφιάζειν

Πεμπεν όλες αυτῳ τους θεραπευομένες.

:

Damon, who plied the undertaker's trade, With Doctor Krateas an agreement made. What grave clothes Damon from the dead could seize,

He to the Doctor sent for bandages : While the good Doctor-here no bargainbreaker

Sent all his patients to the Undertaker.

1.

An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be weighed even in patent scales, nor brought to market.

2.

It is an old discovery that man passes from knowledge to doubt, and thence again attains to knowledge. But it is a vulgar error to suppose that we return not only to the same knowledge, but that in the same forms, and under the same limitations as before.

3.

All religion implies that the universe is a system of essential good, not evil. And this in spite of experience, which acquaints us with nothing but a mixture, in larger or smaller proportion, of good and evil, neither of them at any time pure from some ingredient of the other. Thus the great general axiom of all higher than Pagan religion is the existence of an Absolute which transcends experience. No philosophy which teaches this can, with out danger of calumny, be called irreligious.

4.

Of a mere chaos, blank ignorance would be the only corresponding image in the soul. Of a mere hell, an unchecked appetite of hatred would be the proper counterpart in man. All knowledge contradicts the one view; all goodness the other. The energies of life in all men work in opposition to both falsehoods, and take for granted their emptiness. But the clear insight and mature conscientiousness of the wise man realize the complete victory over all doubt of truth, and all selfabandonment to evil.

5.

The true idea of a philosopher, and that which, dimly apprehended, has been the cause of the universal reverence, even if only a reverential hatred, connected with the name, isa man who discerns an Absolute Truth more clearly than others, and is thus enabled to found on it a scientific, that is, systematic construction of all knowledge. To this idea is directly opposed that of a man whose aim is to establish the uncertainty of all things,who is certain only that we can know nothing certainly. To this class of NO. CCLXXXIX, VOL. XLVI.

thinkers belong not merely Pyrrhonists, that is, the dealers in lazy and captious frivolities of speculation, but all who maintain, however zealously and consistently, that we know nothing beyond appearances-all who teach that truth is endowed with a positive value and certainty, but only in refe. rence to us, who are essentially fallible, as having in ourselves no measure or organ of the absolute. Of such men, Locke, though often inconsistent, and sometimes suggesting a higher belief than he could clearly understand, is, on the whole, the great modern master. But from this, it by no means follows, nor indeed is it at all true, that he and his most decided followers have asserted nothing but error as to the mode in which our conceptions arise, and are associated and generalized. On the contrary, his writings, and those of others who pursue the same method, abound in ingenious and undeniable explanations of many phenomena of consciousness. Their error-when a philosopher of a higher and more genuine school must believe them in error-is in the denial of any deeper ground of conviction in man than that which can be reduced to the impressions of objects, and the manufacture of these into conceptions, and sequences of conceptions.

6.

The belief in an Absolute Truth discernible by man, under whatever conditions, is the common ground of all constructive, all religious philosophies; by which they are contradistinguished from all the schemes which would reduce the objects of knowledge to an accidental and relative medley of facts, and the powers of knowing to implements produced by no previous high necessity of reason, and of which we can only say that here they are-and neither why nor whence. The enquiries of the empirical analyses, pursued, as they may be, with serious devotion to truth, have yet so strong a tendency to deaden and choke up the inlets for all higher suggestions, that the affirmation of an absolute reality discernible by man seems to such a one, when at all accomplished in his own method, no better than the conceits of children

2 U