136 PEOSB HALIEUTIOS. 



vouchers of their right to be there^ arrived; vrhen the 

 host must welcome and assign to all their places ; and as 

 the different tricliniums filled with lolling friends, then, 

 nor before, must issue the crowning order of the day, 

 to 'bring in the mullet' — not dead and swimming in 

 sauce — but alive, and swimming* in a capacious globe 

 of glass, to be handed round to the buzzing crowd, the 

 theme of rapturous eulogy from, every tongue; till hun- 

 ger restraining further curiosity, the fish were slowly 

 put to death in ' fulsome' sauce; nor till the last struggle 

 was over were they removed for awhile, preparatory to a 

 second entree on a ' lordly dish,' now done to a turn, 

 again to become the theme of conversation, and not un- 

 frequently a subject of contention. 



The last scene of the mullet's sufferings, whether left 

 to die a sec, or drowned in ' allies' sauce' — garum soci- 

 orum — and the barbarity of the master and guests who 

 could sit coolly by and witness them, have called forth 

 some energetic expressions of sympathy for the fish, and 

 of execration for the company, in two singular declama- 

 tory passages from a Roman and a Parisian philosopher, 

 from which we hope it may be safe to express modified 

 dissent, without passing for an approver either of cruelty 

 or gluttony. We print the Latin diatribe below,t but 



* If sucli tricks were played with, fish then, as Antonio, our 

 Neapolitan cook, assured us are now practised at Naples, it was 

 certainly well to be in at the death. He told us, on our ohject- 

 ing to a dish of stinking mullet, which he would have persuaded 

 us were just out of the water, that that man was an ingannatore 

 who had misinformed our excellency that red gills proved triglia 

 to be fresh; since the dealers were notoriously in the habit of 

 painting these parts red, and of varnishing the whole fish to look 

 bright, on purpose to cheat Englishmen. If his information was 

 correct, ' Nimium ne crede colori ' would be no inappropriate in- 

 scription to put up over the portico of the Neapolitan fish- 

 market. 



t ' Quanto crudellora sunt opera luxurise ! quoties naturam aut 



