sat about it at his round table, and usually consumed it to the very bones before they would enter upon any debate of moment.  The Black Prince was a professed lover of the brisket; not to mention the history of the sirloin, or the institution of the order of Beefeaters, which are all so many evident and undeniable proofs of the great respect which our warlike predecessors have paid to this excellent food.  The tables of the ancient entry of this nation were covered thrice a day with hot roast-beef; and I am credibly informed by an antiquary, who has searched the registers in which the bills of fare of the court are recorded, that instead of tea and bread and butter which have prevailed of late years, the maids of honour in queen Elizabeth’s time were allowed three rumps of beef for their breakfast!”

Now this is manly, and so is the diet it advises; I recommend both to my readers.  Let each determine to make one convert, himself that one.  On Christmas day, let each dine off, or at least have on his table, the good old English fare, roast beef and plum-pudding! and does such beef as our island produces need recommendation?  What more nutritive and delicious? and, for a genuine healthy Englishman, what more proper than this good old national English dish?  Let him whose stomach will not bear it, look about and insure his life—­I would not give much for it.  It ought, above all other places, to be duly honoured in our officers’ mess-rooms.  As Prior says,

“If I take Dan Congreve right,
Pudding and beef make Britons fight.”

So, then, if beef be indeed so excellent, we shall not much wonder that Shakspeare should say,

—­“A pound of man’s flesh
Is not so estimable or profitable. 
As flesh of mutton, beeves, or goats!”

The French have christened us (and I think it no disreputable sobriquet) Jack Roastbeef, from a notion we cannot live without roast-beef, any more than without plum-pudding, porter, and punch; however, the notion is palpably erroneous.  We are proving more and more every day—­to our shame be it spoken!—­that we can live without it.  At least do not let it be said we can pass a Christmas without it, merely to make way for turkeys, fricassees, and ragouts!  “Oh, reform it altogether!”

* * * * *

England was always famous among foreigners for the celebration of Christmas, at which time our ancestors introduced many sports and pastimes unknown in other countries, or now even among ourselves.  “At the feast of Christmas,” says Stowe, “in the king’s court, wherever he chanced to reside, there was appointed a lord of misrule, or master of merry disports; the same merry fellow made his appearance at the house of every nobleman and gentleman of distinction; and, among the rest, the lord mayor of London and the sheriffs had their lords of misrule, ever contending, without quarrel or offence, who should make the rarest pastime to delight the beholders.”  Alas!