Mr Foster was preparing to reply, when the first dinner-bell rang, and he immediately commenced a precipitate return towards the house; followed by his two companions, who both admitted that he was now leading the way to at least a temporary period of physical amelioration:  “but, alas!” added Mr Escot, after a moment’s reflection, “Epulae NOCUERE repostae![4.3]”

CHAPTER V The Dinner

The sun was now terminating his diurnal course, and the lights were glittering on the festal board.  When the ladies had retired, and the Burgundy had taken two or three tours of the table, the following conversation took place:—­

Squire Headlong. Push about the bottle:  Mr Escot, it stands with you.  No heeltaps.  As to skylight, liberty-hall.

Mr Mac Laurel. Really, Squire Headlong, this is the vara nectar itsel.  Ye hae saretainly discovered the tarrestrial paradise, but it flows wi’ a better leecor than milk an’ honey.

The Reverend Doctor Gaster. Hem!  Mr Mac Laurel! there is a degree of profaneness in that observation, which I should not have looked for in so staunch a supporter of church and state.  Milk and honey was the pure food of the antediluvian patriarchs, who knew not the use of the grape, happily for them.—­(Tossing off a bumper of Burgundy.)

Mr Escot. Happy, indeed!  The first inhabitants of the world knew not the use either of wine or animal food; it is, therefore, by no means incredible that they lived to the age of several centuries, free from war, and commerce, and arbitrary government, and every other species of desolating wickedness.  But man was then a very different animal to what he now is:  he had not the faculty of speech; he was not encumbered with clothes; he lived in the open air; his first step out of which, as Hamlet truly observes, is into his grave[5.1].  His first dwellings, of course, were the hollows of trees and rocks.  In process of time he began to build:  thence grew villages; thence grew cities.  Luxury, oppression, poverty, misery, and disease kept pace with the progress of his pretended improvements, till, from a free, strong, healthy, peaceful animal, he has become a weak, distempered, cruel, carnivorous slave.

The Reverend Doctor Gaster. Your doctrine is orthodox, in so far as you assert that the original man was not encumbered with clothes, and that he lived in the open air; but, as to the faculty of speech, that, it is certain, he had, for the authority of Moses——­

Mr Escot. Of course, sir, I do not presume to dissent from the very exalted authority of that most enlightened astronomer and profound cosmogonist, who had, moreover, the advantage of being inspired; but when I indulge myself with a ramble in the fields of speculation, and attempt to deduce what is probable and rational from the sources of analysis, experience, and comparison, I confess I am too often apt to lose sight of the doctrines of that great fountain of theological and geological philosophy.