105 



all her subjects from eating it on pain of death, 

 through fear that there might not be enough left 

 for her majesty. 



This fondness for fish seems to be a sort of royal 

 passion : more than one of our English sovereigns 

 died of eating too many lampreys ; though, to own 

 the truth, it was suspected that the monks, in an in- 

 stance or two, improved the same by the addition 

 of a little ratsbane ; and Mirabeau assures us, that 

 Frederick the Second of Prussia might have pro- 

 longed his existence, if he could but have resisted 

 the fascination of an eel-pye ; but the charm was too 

 strong for him, and, like his great-grandmother of 

 all, he ate and died — " All for eel-pye, or this world 

 well lost ! " And now, which had to resist the most 

 difficult temptation, Frederic or Eve ? She longed 

 to experience pleasures yet untasted, and which 

 she fancied to be exquisite : he, like Sigismunda, 

 pined after known pleasures, and which he knew 

 to be good ; she was the dupe of imagination ; he 

 fell a victim to established habit. Which was the 

 most deserving pardon ? There is a question for 

 the bishops : those clergymen who reside constantly 

 on their livings (as all clergymen ought to do, or 

 they ought not to be clergymen), I shall, in charity, 

 believe to have something better to do with their 

 time than to solve it. 



The provision-grounds of the negroes furnish 

 them with plantains, bananas, cocoa-nuts, and yams: 

 of the latter there is a regular harvest once a year, 



