326 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM, 



benevolence ; and while he maintained in the exercise of 

 these qualities the discipline of the troops he ably com- 

 manded, he greatly surpassed his contemporaries in his 

 treatment of the vanquished. 



In no instance, then, should we confound a large 

 expenditure with extravagance, or the occasional with the 

 habitual. Even if our judgment be sound and the proof 

 is always wanting where this is hastily assumed unless 

 the minutest details are all arranged and surveyed, any 

 decision would only indicate our folly, and may justly 

 bring on us shame. When a balance can weigh the ten- 

 thousandth part of a grain, what a trifle will cause a pre- 

 ponderance ! 



Still, it must be contended that a mere oyster-life is 

 of more frequent occurrence than might at once be 

 admitted. Of one person it is said : " He has learned the 

 science of good eating by practising it, and he often orders 

 down to Salisbury from London a couple of quarts of turtle 

 and a haunch of venison, for his own eating, and sits down 

 to dinner by himself; scorning (like Sir Hercules)"' -we 

 suppose Sir Hercules Langrish "all assistance but that 

 of a bottle of Madeira and two bottles of old port." 

 (Quarterly Review). We have ourselves known parallel 

 instances of as enormous, if not as solitary gluttony, and 

 there are many others that make to it an approach that is 

 lamentable and degrading. For 



" What is man, 



If his chief good, and market of his time, 

 Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast no more." 



Even the beast is disgraced, however unintentionally, 

 by the poet's comparison. The quadruped obeys its appe- 

 tite, but without excess in a morsel or a drop. The bird is 

 equally a symbol of temperance. Even the oyster closes 



