THE TABLE D'HOTE. 



ferred, on the community of apes and monkies, two worthy members of 

 the marmoset society. But, as they were younger branches of a noble 

 family, and utterly unequal to the duties of an intellectual profession, 

 they had been decorously designed as members of the church ; which, 

 such is its laudable constitution, would allow them, on the produce of a 

 benefice, the gift of an aristocratic patron, to support the pleasures of a 

 libertine abroad, while their important cures were arduously performed 

 at home by some ill-paid, devout, half-starved, and conscientious clergy- 

 man. Either of these high-bred gentlemen, confessed himself account- 

 able for half a dozen bastards, whom he had left, with commendable 

 spirit, to the chances of the world ; and the inexhaustible theme of their 

 discourse, was, on the infamy which they had severally carried into the 

 the abodes of a dependent tenantry, and the ingenuous devises by which 

 they had overcome the scruples of simplicity and innocence. 



Another personage, who bore a part in the diurnal ceremony, was a 

 midshipman a youth of twenty-one the genuine emanation of a cock- 

 pit, in its former day Mr. Benbow, took a pride in being one of the old 

 school as he himself expressed it, a downright, rough, bluff, honest tar, 

 in short, a bear. His manner was uncouth, and as for conversation, 

 he had none. The midshipman had still resources, and as he felt the 

 want of perfect ease in his deportment, and imagined, that if perceptible 

 to others, it might possibly be ascribed to mauvaise honte, he had 

 recourse to oaths and whistling ; he disdained to place a dish, a wine- 

 glass, or caraffe, with ought like gentleness upon the table ; but 

 dropped, or rather flung it from his grasp, with much the same indif- 

 ference to its integrity, as if he had cast a tough ship's biscuit on his 

 chest, in the hurry of escaping from his birth, at the omnipotent sum- 

 mons from the quarter deck, for reefing topsails in a squall. Besides, he 

 drank with an insuperable air of independence ; didn't care a d n for 

 any one, blasted all sour wines, when swallowing goblets of good 

 ordinaire, and swore that there was nothing eatable in France, while 

 bolting a succession of what he termed generically, " kickshaws," and 

 compared with all the energy of national detraction to the old roast beef 

 and good salt junk of England. Besides, the agreeable habit of speak- 

 ing with his mouth full, when, according to the direction of his face, he 

 suffused his neighbour's glass, or the plat immediately before him, his 

 independent breeding taught him, that to throw his legs about, was an 

 indisputable proof of general indifference ; so that Mr. Benbow, in the 

 plenitude of his magnificence, was wont to set the glasses on the table 

 in a pirouette, at intervals, not, certainly, more distant than five minutes 

 each. 



There were also of the party, a few country squires, the heroes of the 

 fox-chase, whose grand achievements formed an admirable counterpoise 

 to the voluminous narrations of alligators, Tippoo Saheb, and tigers; 

 the peculiar province of our new acquaintance, Mr. Blunt. All these 

 gentlemen, unmounted as they were, were fruitful of their anecdotes of 

 horsemanship ; each one was a rider of unrivalled desperation, and the 

 marvels of the preceding story were sure to be eclipsed by the wonders 

 of its successor. Not a double fence in Leicestershire, a brook in 

 Gloucestershire, or blind ditch in Essex, that was not the scene of some 

 incredible performance, achieved though, not the less, by some of the 

 neck-or-nothing Nimrod's present. Each gentleman possessed a most 

 sonorous voice, and the " view-holloa" was occasionally given, to the 



