—­As appetite is wont to dream,
  Of meats and drinks, nature’s refreshment sweet.

But what meats?—­

  Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood,
  And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
  Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn;
  Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought: 
  He saw the prophet also how he fled
  Into the desert, and how there he slept
  Under a juniper; then how awaked
  He found his supper on the coals prepared,
  And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
  And ate the second time after repose,
  The strength whereof sufficed him forty days: 
  Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook,
  Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate dreams of the divine Hungerer.  To which of these two visionary banquets, think you, would the introduction of what is called the grace have been most fitting and pertinent?

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces; but practically I own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve something awkward and unseasonable.  Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continuing the species.  They are fit blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming gratitude; but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise.  The Quakers who go about their business, of every description, with more calmness than we, have more title to the use of these benedictory prefaces.  I have always admired their silent grace, and the more because I have observed their applications to the meat and drink following to be less passionate and sensual than ours.  They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people.  They eat, as a horse bolts his chopt hay, with indifference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances.  They neither grease nor slop themselves.  When I see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice.

I am no Quaker at my food.  I confess I am not indifferent to the kinds of it.  Those unctuous morsels of deer’s flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate services.  I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to know what he is eating.  I suspect his taste in higher matters.  I shrink instinctively from one who professes to like minced veal.  There is a physiognomical character in the tastes for food.  C——­ holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings.  I am not certain but he is right.  With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates.  The whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me.  Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle thoughts.  I am impatient and querulous under culinary disappointments, as to come home at the dinner hour, for instance, expecting some