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THE of saying grace at meals had, probably, its in in the early times of the world, and the huate of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full meal was more than a on blessing; when a belly-full was a windfall, and looked like a special providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deers oats flesh would naturally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the mrace. It is not otherwise easy to be uood, why the blessing of food -- the act of eating -- should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving ao it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of existence. I own that I am disposed to sa<bdo></bdo>y grace upoy other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, these spiritual repasts -- a grace before Milton -- a grace before Shakspeare -- a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen? -- but, the received ritual having prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall fine my observations to the experience which I have had of the grace, properly so called; ending my new scheme for extension to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and per part heretical, liturgy, now piling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug gregation of Utopian Rabelaesian Christians, no matter where assembled.The form then of the beion before eating has its beauty at a poor mans table, or at the simple and unprovocative repasts of children. It is here that the race bees exceedingly graceful. The i man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the day or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the blessing, which be but feebly acted by the rich, into whose minds the ception of wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme theory, have ehe proper end of food -- the animal sustenance -- is barely plated by them. The poor mans bread is his daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are perennial.
Again, the plai diet seems the fittest to be preceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind most free for fn siderations. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinand institution of eating; when he shall fess a perturbation of mind, insistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus hospes) at rich mens tables, with the savoury soup and messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt the introdu of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous asm upon you, it seems impertio interpose a religious se. It is a fusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put out the gentle flame of devotion. The inse which rises round is pagan, and the belly-god intercepts it for his own. The very excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all sense of proportioween the end and means. The giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice of returning thanks -- for what ? -- for having too much, while so many starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss.
I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce sciously perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have seen it in clergymen and others -- a sort of shame -- a sense of the co-presence of circumstances whihallow the blessing. After a devotional to on for a few seds, hoidly the speaker will fall into his on voice, helping himself or his neighbour, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good man ocrite, or was not most stious in the discharge of the duty; but he felt in his <q>.</q>inmost mind the inpatibility of the se and the viands before him with the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.
I hear somebody exclaim, -- Would you have Christians sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without remembering the Giver? no -- I would have them sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, and they must pamper themselves with delicacies for which east a are ransacked, I would have them postpoheir beion to a fitter season, when appetite is laid; wheill small voice be heard, and the reason of the grace returns -- with temperate diet aricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil khe harpy-nature better, whe into the mouth of Celaeno any thing but a blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferiratitude: but the proper object of the grace is sustenanot relishes; daily bread, not delicacies; the means of life, and not the means of pampering the carcass. With what frame or posure, I wonder, a city chaplain pronounce his beion at some great Hall feast, when he knows that his last cluding pious word -- and that, in all probability, the sacred name which he preaches -- is but the signal for so many impatient harpies to eheir foul ies, with as little sense of true thankfulness (which is temperance) as those Virgilian fowl! It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little cloude９９lｉb?d, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice.
The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the ba which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, provides for a temptation in the wilderness:
A table richly spread in regal mode,
With dishes piled, as of sort
And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Gris-amber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore,
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained
Pontus, and Lue bay, and Afric coast.
The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would go down without the reendatory preface of a beion. They are like to he shraces where the devil plays the host. -- I am afraid the poet wants his usual de in this place. Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole ba is too civid ary, and the apas altogether a profanation of that deep, abstracted, holy se. The mighty artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend jures up, is out of proportion to the simple wants and plain hunger of the guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, from his dreams might have been taught better. To the temperate fantasies of the famished Son of God, what sort of feasts presehemselves ? -- He dreamed indeed,
-- As appetite is wont to dream,
Of meats and drinks, natures refreshment sweet.
But what meats? --
Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn;
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought:
He saw the prophet also how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juhen how awaked
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise a,
And ate the sed time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Da his pulse.
Nothing in Milton is finelier fahaemperate dreams of the divine Huo which of these two visionary bas, think you, would the introdu of what is called the grace have been most fitting ai?
Theoretically I am no eo graces; but practically I own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve something awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and tinuing the species. They are fit blessings to be plated at a distah a being gratitude; but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The Quakers who go about their business, of every description, with more ess than we, have more title to the use of these beory prefaces. I have always admired their silent grace, and the more because I have observed their applications to the meat and drink following to be less passionate and sensual than ours. They are her gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, as a horse bolts his chopt hay, with indifference, ess, and ly circumstahey her grease nor slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I agi a surplice.
I am no Quaker at my food. I fess I am not indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unorsels of deers flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, affeg not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively from one who professes to like minced veal. There is a physiognomical character iastes for food. C---- holds that a man ot have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is right. With the dey first innoce, I fess a less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gehoughts. I am impatient and querulous under ary disappois, as to e home at the dinner hour, for instance, expeg some savoury mess, and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill melted -- that o of kit failures -- puts me beside my tenour. -- The author of the Rambler used to make inarticulate animal noises over a favourite food. Was this the music quite proper to be preceded by the grace? or would the pious man have doer to postpone his devotions to a seasohe blessing might be plated with less perturbation? I quarrel with no mans tastes, nor would set my thin face against those excellent things, in their way, jollity aing. But as these exercises, however laudable, have little in them of grace racefulness, a man should be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, that while he is pretending his devotions otherwhere, he is not secretly kissing his hand to some great fish -- his Dagon -- with a special secration of no ark but the fat tureen before him. Graces are the sweet preluding strains to the bas of angels and children; to the roots and severer repasts of the Chartreuse; to the slender, but not slenderly aowledged, refe of the poor and humble man: but at the heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious they bee of dissonant mood, less timed and tuo the ocethinks, than the noise of those better befitting ans would be, which childreales of, at Hogs Norto too long at our meals, or are too curious iudy of them, or too disordered in our application to them, ross too<bdi>?９9lｉb?</bdi> great a portion of those good things (which should be on) to our share, to be able with any grace to say grace. To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion is to add hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of this truth is what makes the performance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at most tables. In houses where the grace is as indispensable as the napkin, who has not seen that never settled question arise, as to who shall say it; while the good man of the house and the visitor clergyman, or some uest belike of authority from years ravity, shall be -- bandying about the office between them as a matter of pliment, each of them not unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an equivocal duty from his own shoulders?
I once drank tea in pany with two Methodist divines of different persuasions, whom it was my fortuo introduce to each other for the first time that evening. Before the first cup was handed round, one of these reverelemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to say any thing. It seems it is the with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less importance he made ahat it was not a known in his church: in which courteous evasioher acquiesg food manners sake, or in pliah a weak brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived altogether. With irit mi<var>?9９lｉｂ.</var>ght not Lu have paiwo priests, of his religion, playing into each others hands the pliment of perf or omitting a sacrifice, -- the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his inse, with expet nostrils h over the two flamens, and (as between two stools) going away in the end without his supper.
A short form upon these occasions is felt to want reverence; a long one, I am afraid, ot escape the charge of impertinence. I do not quite approve of the epigrammatiess with which that equivocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L., when importuned frace used to inquire, first slyly leering dowable, "Is there no clergyman here?" -- signifitly adding, "thank G---." Nor do I think our old form at school quite perti, where we were used to preface our bald bread and cheese suppers with a preamble, eg with that humble blessing a reition of bes the most awful and overwhelming to the imagination which religion has to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus. I remember we were put to it to recile the phrase "good creatures," upon which the blessied, with the fare set before us, wilfully uanding that expression in a low and animal sense, -- til some one recalled a legend, which told how in the golden days of Christs, the young Hospitallers were wont to have smoking joints of roast meat upon their nightly boards, till some pious beor, iserating the decies, rather than the palates, of the children, uted our flesh farments, and gave us -- horresco referens -- trowsers instead of mutton.
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