In reading the second volume of Marmontel, I met with the following passage, which exactly agrees with my own ideas of diet. He says: "I once indulged the whim of living for six weeks on milk, at Compeigne. Never was my soul more calm, more powerful, than during this regimen. My days flowed along in study, with unalterable equality; my nights were but one gentle sleep, and after waking in the morning, what pleasure to drink a bowl of milk from my little black cow. I again closed my eyes to Discord might have over slumber another hour. turned the world; it would not have shaken me." Diet, with literary people, is of the greatest importance, in keeping a nice balance between mind and body. The dictates of nature are a safe guide to follow in the choice of food. Milk more speedily restores and nourishes the body than any other kind of food. We increase in size and weight more rapidly in infancy, than in any after stage of life. I have taken it for my supper, thickened with oatmeal, through a long life, and can say with Marmontel, that I have risen in the morning with life and spirit. I never take it for breakfast, as two meals precisely alike should not follow each other. The stomach likes L a change. Tea is the greatest blessing ever bestowed on literary and sedentary men. Whenever the bodily exertions are light, the food should be light also. Tea is peculiarly adapted for those females who have no laborious occupation. During fifty years, many poor nervous creatures have applied to me for an admission into the Leicester Infirmary, whose complaints I could trace to the bad habit of drinking their tea too hot. I have asked them, "Did you ever put the back of your little finger into your cup of tea just before you drank it ?" "No" has always been the answer. "Then go home,” I have replied, “and make this experiment. your finger is scalded, see how you have been treating the delicate coats of your stomach." I have then given them some pure oatmeal to make into milk porridge for their supper, and told them to call upon me in a week, and, if no better, I would give them a recommendation. Many have come to thank me, saying they had lost their complaint. Coffee, in my If opinion, is not so wholesome as tea, unless drunk in the way of the French-nearly half milk. I agree with Marmontel's opinion as to playing at cards. He says:-"When at the Palace of Fontainebleau, I had but one amusement-to be a by-stander at the royal card table in the drawing-room. There I had used to look round the lansquenet table, and observe the torments of passion, the greedy thirst for gold, hope, fear, the pain of losing, the ardour of winning, the joy that followed a full hand, the despair that accompanied baffled expectation, under the stern mask of cold tranquillity." I, too, have witnessed similar agitation in the more humble circles in my native town. A lover of fine arts can have no real pleasure in such conflicts. In a musical party at the house of Major Roberts, I was pressed by three ladies to make one at a loo table. I said I knew nothing of the game Oh! that was not at all necessary ; I should soon learn it. These ladies had once been handsome, but their soft looks had become hardened by , eagerness for play. It was to be unlimited loo. Very well," I said, said, "The less restrained, the more noble the game," and my spirit was applauded. Alas! in ten minutes I lost all the gold in my pocket. I left the table, and consoled myself at the pianoforte. From that day to this I have never been seduced to play again at loo. It is a wise maxim, never to meddle with anything you don't well understand. CHAPTER XLVI. JOHN BROWN. My musical friend Brown, a shy melancholy bachelor, was drawn into marriage by a pretty face and beguiling tongue. He was a man of few words, and his part in the courtship consisted more of nods and winks, than the usual tokens of love. The insinuating looks of the lady sank deep into John's good natured heart, and he fell a prey to Miss Bridget's winning ways. The honey-moon was scarcely over, when Mrs. Brown, to carry a favourite point, opened her loquacious battery upon her husband—a sort of music for which he had no relish. All she could do only provoked a shake of the head, which never failed to add to the fury of the cannonade. When her crescendo was at the highest, Brown would take to his bass viol, and strum over a noisy tune, to drive her song out of his ears. I felt for my friend, and furnished him with the following, which he played and sang with all his might, whenever she let fly a volley upon him : SONG.-(PAGE 370.) "A woman's face is full of wiles, Her tears are either hot or cool: |