ledge of a single dish is just as wonderful an exercise of the reasoning faculty, to say nothing of the superior importance and dignity of gastronomical researches. The discoveries of my friend Spunge were mnade to be eaten, whereas Cuvier, when he had worked out of his head the finest and fattest Megatherion that ever Nimrod bagged in a day's coursing, had never the pleasure of broiling one of its stupendous chops, or supping on one of its seven-leagued trotters.

When all the intelligence of the day was collected the great question came to be discussed-where to spunge? And this was a problem not always to be solved by the mere relative merits of the dinners on the list. The best cheer was sometimes at a house where he had volunteered already hazardously often; or the recollection of a "cold shoulder" would occasionally induce him to relinquish a better table for a worse. Ceteris paribus, however, he pushed for the best dinner to be had, and he generally contrived, for four or five days in the week, to escape the horrors of a solitary beefsteak. But there were times when, with all his sagacity, he miscalculated egregiously, and committed himself inextricably to a leg of mutton and turnips, where the phenomena seemed to prognosticate all that is substantial upon the earth, dainty in the air, or delicious in the waters.

Upon one occasion perceiving an unusual culinary ferment at a house in

street, the furnace thrice heated, and the batterie de cuisine playing all its guns, he "dropped in" upon his hospitable friend Sir Thomas Titmouse in his most felicitous and accidental style. The point was carried with the most charming facility, and my formal friend insisted upon returning home to dress, although Sir Thomas goodnaturedly proposed to receive him, "accoutred as he was."

The idea was shocking, and accordingly at the appointed hour he reappeared in a white waistcoat, refulgent as to his feet in patent leather, and in full dining-out array. Sir Thomas and his lady received him; there was no other company!

"By day and night," thought he, "but this is wondrous strange !" to wit, that the good knight and his lady should have ordered so splendid a dinner for their simple selves. However, "the fewer the better cheer," says the proverb; and as the greedy old adage passed across his mind, the luxurious trio went down to the parlour. They were seated-a triangular dinner-party is better than a triangular duel, at any rate. The covers rose. Mysterious heaven!-a pair of fried soles and a boiled neck of mutton! The kitchen where the furnace was thrice heated, and where he had seen the culinary battery playing all its guns, was the kitchen of the adjoining house!

Upon another occasion descrying a haunch of venison revolving before a glowing fire, where there was no possibility of being deceived as to the connexion between the kitchen and the house, he invited himself, or extorted an invitation, as usual. There was a family party, but for the sake of a haunch he could put up with a great deal. The time came; dinner was served, solid and stolid as such dinners are notoriously. There was a very strong soup and a very big fish, and these good things having vanished, their respective places were taken by a sirloin from a prize ox, and a prodigious boiled turkey.

"Where is the haunch?' was the soliloquy of Spunge.

There was the place where the venison was not.

But he had seen the haunch at the fire, et nullus error, as the duke has it; so he remembered that they do strange things at family dinners in parts of Marylebone, and concluded that the venison was reserved for the second course! That course in due course came. Spunge gazed with aching eye-balls, and still

There was the place where the venison was not.

He beheld nothing but widgeon and snipes, and a plum-pudding of pantomimic magnitude.

"Zounds! are they keeping the haunch of venison for the dessert ?" was the silent ejaculation of his bruised spirit. But long to maintain silence was impossible; the thing was so far "above reason" that flesh and blood could not resist the desire to ask an elucidation. Accordingly he alluded, as cautiously and incidentally as he could, to the sight he had witnessed through the kitchen windows. A general titter was preliminary to an universal laugh. Then came the explanation, which was shockingly simple. It chanced that a family, occupying a small house next door, and not having the fear of the Insolvent court before their eyes, were giving a grand entertainment that same day, and wanting sufficient room for the operations of their cook, had requested their accomodating neighbours to roast the haunch in question at their more commodious fire.

There are numbers of convivial souls who never in their lives invited a soul to dinner but-themselves! It is vastly agreeable to be one's own host, and to entertain oneself at another's table.

“ Mr. A—, requests the honour of Mr. Aner, at the house of Mr. B.”

-'s company at din

This is the formula of a self-invitation, and is decidedly the cheapest, if not the most respectable mode of entertaining company. By this plan Mr. B― has all the trouble and expense, with the exception of the aforesaid little bit of brass, which is all that the dinner costs Mr. A, and he can, spare it extremely well, having a handsome competence of the same coin to live on. Economy, however, is not the sole advantage of the system. Had B- invited A, there would have been an obligation upon A-to invite B-- in return. This is so well established that it is held that an action lies by inviter against invitee, in case the latter enters upon the premises of the former by virtue of his writ of invitation, and dines at the inviter's costs and charges. Some lawyers indeed go the length of maintaining that there is a right of action in all cases where there is a bona fide card or note, whether the invitation be accepted or refused. But be this as it may, it seems perfectly indisputable that where there is no invitation there can be no obligation incurred, and this is a principle of immense importance, for as there is nothing so painful to an independent mind as to be in debt, even for a dinner, so is there nothing more convenient than to dine luxuriously, and leave the house of one's Amphitryon, not merely not bound to requite him with so much as a mutton-chop, but morally justified in cutting to-morrow the very man whose venison you cut to-day.

The force of the word engagement, as it is used in the commerce of

hospitality, is not always understood as it ought to be. To what does the inviter engage the invitee? Not merely to the dinner, because the latter has a clear right to decline the invitation, if he has received another which he likes better. The nature of the engagement is, that the invitee shall name another day upon which he is to play the host instead of the guest, and degrade conviviality into a grovelling mercantile transaction. Now by the system of self-invitation the members of the Spunge family keep clear of this low practice, and incur no engagements whatsoever. Nay in strictness they are engaged to themselves, and if they are under any obligation, it is to invite themselves to another dinner.

Hospitality is, no doubt, an admirable moral quality, and a truly christian virtue. We forget whether it is one of the cardinal virtues, but it is certainly strongly recommended to bishops. The essence of it, however, consists in its being cheerful and spontaneous, and exercised without the remotest view to return or recompense. This the Spunges understand so thoroughly that they never dream of making a return for the entertainments they partake of. Indeed they cannot properly be said to accept hospitalities at all, as they are never invited, and very seldom welcome.

An acquaintance of mine, who had fallen from prosperous into adverse circumstances, had the weakness to upbraid a fair-weather friend with the number of good dinners he had eaten at his house in the jolly days gone by. The defence of the latter was complete.

"You never invited me to dinner in your life!"

The pickpocket who procures a dinner by the sale of a stolen watch, might as reasonably be expected to be grateful to the owner of the trinket, as the dinner-snatcher to his scowling and inhospitable host.

The practice of spunging is derived by some authorities from a no less ancient and venerable origin than the community of goods established amongst the Christians of the first century. If A-, being a Christian, gives a dinner, B, another Christian, is upon this high example justified in the eyes of men and angels in partaking of it, as in fact it is as much his own as if the money that paid for the viands had proceeded from his own breeches-pocket. True it is, undoubtedly, that many of the Spunges are not particularly distinguished by their reputation as religious men, and are therefore open to the reproach of being actuated more by the inspiration of the belly-god than by any holier impulse; but we must remember that the most pious men have their pet doctrines and favourite religious observances; and the Spunges are not more exempt from this weakness than their neighbours. The principle of community of goods may be their special favourite, just as almsgiving is the pet virtue of many who compound for five hundred unchristianlike acts committed during six days in the week, by dropping a sovereign into the poor-box on the seventh.

In confirmation of this theory, it is to be further observed that spunging necessarily leads to the development of numerous Christian graces and excellences of the human character. The noble virtue of self-abasement is put into daily practice. A thousand mortifications are not only endured, but courted, which might easily be avoided by merely coming to the selfish resolution of dining at home upon a mut

ton-chop. There is as much of the spirit of martyrdom evinced perhaps in submitting every day to the snubs, rebuffs, dry hits, malign insinuations, cold receptions, and the "thousand ills" that spunging is "heir to," as in roasting at the stake like Servetus, or being shot to death with arrows like St. Sebastian. Many a man submits to be roasted himself for the sake of a roast sirloin, or a roast pig. There are people who would decline to be the butt of a large company for a whole butt of claret; but there are others who willingly submit to it for half a dozen glasses. Surely it will not be maintained that the smaller the recompense the martyr expects, the less meritorious and honourable are the sufferings to which he voluntarily exposes himself. The contrary may fairly be maintained; and then how glorious is the character of him who places himself in the most despicable situation that can be dreamed or imagined for the consideration of a capon's wing and a pint of sherry!

Can the spirit of self-humiliation stoop much lower than this? To enter without a welcome, to depart amidst general and almost audible acclamation,-to partake of good cheer without a word or look of hospitable encouragement,-to feel that you are the guest by sufferance of one who is a host of necessity,-to see that there is an inimical feeling against you from the top to the bottom of the board, -an evil eye upon every motion of your knife and fork, and that the sticking in your throat of the largest and sharpest bone in the turbot would set the table in a roar,"-to ask for goose, and be sure to be helped to the drumstick without sauce,-to know that your company is very little, if any thing, less unacceptable than that of a bailiff, a taxgatherer, or the parish undertaker,-to tremble at the mention of door or window, lest the idea of kicking you out of the one, or flinging you out of the other, should suddenly seize some herculean country cousin, anxious to curry the favour of his rich relations in London,to suspect that you are the giggled-at of every giggling girl, and the object of the unrebuked school-boy's unequivocal laughter, to be one of the circle, yet not for an instant admitted within the pale; to be spoken to rarely and contemptuously, unlooked at, although closely observed, sullenly and sparingly helped, when helped at all, and takenwine-with only out of ostentatious charity. These are but a few of the bitter drops in the Spunge's cup of martyrdom; the

- medio in fonte leporum

Surgit amari aliquid,

is with peculiar truth his sad lot. Taking leave to change the quantity of the penultimate syllable of "leporum," we may take this hackneyed quotation to mean, that "the reflection of being an unwelcome guest would embitter the most delicious hare-soup ever brought to table." However, all this is taking the gloomy and sensitive side of the picture. There certainly are men who feel the humiliations of this calling acutely, yet follow it with perseverance, their love of a good dinner being more than a match for their repugnance to "the rich man's" contumely; but in the majority of instances the spunges are not a thin-skinned race; rather addicted to delicacies than particularly delicate themselves; they have a warmth within them that counteracts the effects of cold looks, cold receptions, and cold shoulders; the

genial glow of self-hospitality sustains them in the frigid zones abroad, which they prefer to the temperate climate of their own proper firesides; they are "made perfect through suffering," and embrace with open eyes, or rather with open mouths, a life of luxurious infamy, counting it a thriving commerce to exchange dishonours for dainties, and a rub for a repast.

Truly marvellous it is what some of these stoics of the mahogany will endure, without the slightest apparent effect upon their spirits and appetite. The following incident took place at a dinner to which one of this fraternity had forced his way through a thousand obstacles.

Papa," asked a precocious boy of eight years old, who in the course of his reading had that day met with the word parasite, "papa, what is a parasite ?"

"A parasite, my dear? why a parasite is one who prefers dining out to dining at home, and at another's expense rather than his own."

66

Papa," pursued the little student, in the ardour of innocent inquiry, is Mr. Gobbleton a parasite ?"

66

You possibly think that Mr. Gobbleton dropped down dead in an apoplectic fit. He did no such thing! What then did Mr. Gobbleton do? He affected not to hear the conversation, and called with perfect composure for a another slice of mutton!

"But my young master was inevitably sent into exile with other pains and penalties."

Tout au contraire, he got an additional mince-pie for his good hit, and it was not the last hit he made at the same gentleman with a view to a similar reward; but Mr. Gobbleton "kept never minding" with the firmness of a Brutus, and maintained his place for years at the same good table with the taste of an Apicius, and the constancy of a Cato.

Another view of the spunging system, is to consider it as one of the many modes by which the balance of human happiness is preserved between those who have too much and those who have too little. Spunging preserves the social equilibrium as smuggling maintains the mercantile. What the spunges consume is all surplus. Their's are the "appropriation claws," which relieve people in too opulent circumstances of their redundant affluence and comfort. Instead of grumbling at the rich, like a snarling Diogenes, the Spunge dines at their expense like a sapient Aristippus. His maxim is the ancient one— "that fools make feasts and wise men eat them." In this view of the matter we may regard spunging as the poor-law of the higher and middle classes, and in what classes are there more paupers to be met with? The system is that of "out-door relief," and it is open to the same objection that was made to our old English poor-laws for the poor, namely, that the pauper fared infinitely better than his independent neighbour, whose high spirit withheld him from becoming a burden to the public. I have sometimes thought that the workhouse system might be introduced with advantage amongst the paupers of from one to five hundred a-year, who abound in this odd country. But it is to be considered that spunging is itself a very laborious oc