professor of eating to prove, that all the great victories of Britain have been gained by the inherent virtue of mutton and beef. He might easily show that the hollow squares of Waterloo would never have been inflexible had the men been individually empty; and he might advise all captains of ships to prevent the unmanageable drunkenness of the seamen in case of danger, by allowing or perhaps compelling every one to stuff himself with energetic and orderly salt beef! The best course of argument for such a professor, would be that on which I am at present briefly (the professor might say beefly) touching-to show the good qualities and effects consequent upon a practice of abandoning every thing for a good dinner, and thence to show that by giving good dinners, the aforesaid good qualities and effects may be extended and perpetuated. I shall leave these matters, however, to Christopher North, who is exactly such a professor as I speak of.

The real cause of my writing this little essay (which will be a great favorite with the Gourmands) is my having met with a few notes of my own on three happy eaters and drinkers, while searching among my papers for something else. These notes are upon M. Fontenelle, Mr. Pennant, and the Chevalier de Johnstone, and they tend directly to illustrate what I have said about men who pro tempore forget every thing in the delight of their stomachs. M. Fontenelle was generally regarded as shockingly devoid of feeling, because when a little Abbé, for whose sake he had consented to have his asparagus fried with butter, happened to go off in an apoplexy before dinner, (before dinner, mind that!) he instantly bawled out to the cook, "all with oil! all with oil!" Now, I apprehend, this does not show so much real want of feeling as it shows

excess of feeling in M. Fontenelle for his dinner. To convince my readers, who know any thing of Fontenelle's character, of this truth, I need only ask them whether they believe that he would not have been absorbed in grief at the fate of the poor Abbé, had the accident occurred after dinner instead of before? The want of feeling for the Abbé is merely negative; it is the want of feeling of forgetting the Abbé in the overpowering idea of asparagus fried with oil. We are not told that Fontenelle did not act becomingly towards the dead man after he had given his order. Indeed he was so virtuous a man, that there is no doubt he would do so. All that I would urge from this anecdote is, that those who have the genius for forgetting themselves in the anticipated or enjoyed delights of eating and drinking, forget also, for a time, their own miseries and those of their fellow creatures, and, in fact, breathe an atmosphere of unadulterated gratification. Indeed, the most complete proof that Fontenelle had not the slightest intention to act indecently with regard to his unfortunate friend, is contained in another anecdote of him in Grimm's Correspondence. It is there stated, that being at dinner with Lord Hyde a short time after the accident, when a dish of asparagus made part of the bill of fare, he observed that what he had said when the Abbé died, seemed to have brought asparagus very much into fashion! I think that if, after this, there remain any reason to attach blame to Fontenelle, it will be only such reason as would blame a heart for unintentional callousness.

Mr. Pennant has never intentionally confessed, as far as I recollect, any propensity to put literature behind a breakfast or a dinner, but the happiness which such matters communicated to him have been unwittingly confessed by himself in his English tours. He closes a fine panegyric upon Dr. Burn, the cele. brated author of the "Justice," with this observation by way of climax: "Had the satisfaction of dining with him!" This passage comes from Mr. P., as if dining with Dr. Burn was the summit of all earthly bliss. Dining at all, therefore, must have been very high in his calendar of human enjoyment. In another part, Mr. P. says of Raby Castle, "This is the princely seat of the Earl of Darlington, whom I found at breakfast, and who received me with great politeness." What is this but saying, that the noble earl gave him an excellent breakfast? A little way from this passage about the Earl of Darlington, Mr. Pennant says: "Reached the palace of Bishop Aucland, catching my worthy friend the Bishop as he was sitting down to dinner." Now, if these affairs of breakfasts and dinners had not been of the very first importance in the mind of Mr. Pennant, is it probable that he would have given them the slightest notice? And does not this recording such transactions, show how forcibly very good dinners and breakfasts had impressed themselves on the imagination of the naturalist? Are we not convinced of the strength of the immediate impression, by the very very strong recollection of such scenes which compelled Mr. P. to immortalise them amongst accounts of antiquities and country seats.

But the Chevalier de Johnstone is the man above all others who has proved that eating is the very soul of courage-or, rather, that when there is good eating and drinking to be had, the true warrior will never know despair. Mr. Pennant had no dangers to forget by dining with Dr. Burn, or the Bishop of Durham, but the Chevalier was surrounded with danger; yet wherever there was excellent food, he forgot every thing but that; and it was not till after he had satisfied his immediate appetite that he thought of eating

more, lest he might not speedily fall in with provisions equally tempting. After the defeat at Culloden, when he and all the rest of the followers of Prince Charles were wandering about in momentary fear of apprehension by bands of the royal troops - when he hardly knew where to lay his head, except occasionally for a night, or even for an hour-he lamented the want of food, or abused a temporary repast of oatmeal, as if he had been lounging about in Bond Street, in all the security of allegiance, and with all the happiness of having the cookery of a first-rate hotel at his command. "The landlady at Kildrummy," says he, "gave me an excellent fowl for supper;" and that he should not have hunger to suffer amidst other calamities, before he set off he ordered this landlady to roast another, " which," says the Chevalier as dry as possible, " I put in my pocket by way of precaution, for I was uncertain if I should find any thing to eat in the course of the day." While under concealment at Glen Prossen, the Chevalier talks about oatmeal fare as if in a day or two longer he would have ventured on destruction sooner than not have sought another roast fowl. His cry might well be, "Death or a good dinner!" Some time after this oatmeal misery, he says he got a piece of beef at Mr. Graham's, near Broughty, before crossing the Firth.--" I was well entitled," he continues, " to make an ample repast on this occasion, as I was uncertain whether I should have an opportunity of making such another for a long time." This shows, that between his repast at Mr. Graham's and the roast fowl he pocketed at Kildrummy, the Chevalier had thought it would be much better to eat than to pocketthat it was much safer to devour rather an extra quantity than to carry about him for future necessities, what he might never be allowed

to eat! After he had drank a bottle of Mr. Graham's claret, he declares himself sufficiently strong and courageous to attempt any thing!" Was there ever a more complete proof than this of the firmness of the Chevalier's eating and drinking creed? His ideas throughout are of the same character. They all show a man fond of good living even unto death. They are all characteristic of one who despises vulgar provender, and who glories in worshipping nature in her choicest gifts. - When he is anxious to persuade a fisherman to cross a ferry with him, he says, " I did not fail to push about the small beer, which was as weak as water!" What a taste for good things had the man who, at the moment when his life was at stake if he did not get speedily across the ferry, had the cook's presence of mind to criticise the liquor with which he was bribing the poor man to save him! Through his whole life, the notions of cookery and eating apparently seem never to have forsaken him. Even when he was in danger of shipwreck, and the pilot proposed to run into the bank of the river of the town of Maraine; on his commemorating the success of that scheme, he says, our ship entered in the mud as into a pot of butter!" If Fontenelle was criminal in roaring out " oil," after the sudden death of a friend, Johnstone was certainly unfeeling in speaking about "butter," in immediate connexion with his own escape from shipwreck. Indeed the Chevalier's eating and drinking in the midst of danger, reminds me of nothing so much as of those culprits who eat a hearty breakfast just before they are turned off at the gallows. To be sure, the culprits have the worst of it, for they have a moral certainty that they have not more than a few minutes to live whereas the Chevalier had the chance of living, if he could escape. The feeling is so much the same, how

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ever, that one may fairly conclude, that had the Chevalier been ordered to be hanged after dinner, he would have eaten a couple of "excellent fowls" before his execution, and he might perhaps have swallowed a bottle of claret, that he might have been "sufficiently strong and courageous" to meet his fate.

Extractor.

SCOTCH BEGGARS.

By Sir Walter Scott, Bart.

Many of the old Scottish mendicants were by no means to be confounded with the utterly degraded class of beings who now practise that wandering trade. Such of them as were in the habit of travelling through a particular district were usually well received both in the farmer's ha, and in the kitchens of country gentlemen. Martin, author of the Reliquiæ Divi Sancti Andreæ, written in 1683, gives the following account of one class of this order of men in the seventeenth century, in terms which would induce an antiquary like Mr. Oldbuck to regret its extinction. He conceives them to be descended from the ancient bards, and proceeds:" They are called by others, and by themselves, Jockies, who go about begging; and used still to recite the Sloggorne (gathering words or war-cries) of most of the true ancient surnames of Scotland, from old experience and observation. Some of them I have discoursed, and found to have reason and discretion. One of them told me there were not now above twelve of them in the whole isle; but he remembered when they abounded, so as at one time he was one of five that usually met at St. Andrew." The race of Jockies (of the above description) has, I suppose, been long extinct in Scotland; but the old remembered beggar, even in my own time, like the Baccoch, or travelling cripple of Ire

land, was expected to merit his quarters by something beyond an exposition of his distresses. He was often a talkative, facetious fellow, prompt at repartee, and not withheld from exercising his powers that way by any respect of persons, his patched cloak giving him the privilege of the ancient jester. To be a gude crack, that is, to possess talents for conversation, was essential to the trade of a "puir body," of the more esteemed class; and Burns, who delighted in the amusement their discourse afforded, seems to have looked forward with gloomy firmness to the possibility of himself becoming one day or other a member of their itinerant society. In his poetical works it is alluded to so often, as perhaps to indicate that he considered the consummation as not utterly impossible. Thus, in the fine dedication of his works to Gavin Hamilton, he says,

"And when I downa yoke a naig,

Then, Lord be thankit, I can beg." Again, in his Epistle to Davie, a brother poet, he states, that in their closing career

"The last o't, the warst o't,
Is only just to beg."

And after having remarked, that,
"To lie in kilns and barns at e'en,
When banes are crazed and blude is thin,

Is doubtless great distress;"

the bard reckons up, with true poetical spirit, the free enjoyment of the beauties of nature, which might counterbalance the hardship and uncertainty of the life even of a mendicant. In one of his prose letters, to which I have lost the reference, he details this idea yet more seriously, and dwells upon it, as not ill adapted to his habits and powers. As the life of a Scottish mendicant of the eighteenth century seems to have been contemplated without much horror by Robert Burns, the author can hardly have erred in giving to Edie Ochiltree something of

poetical character and personal dignity, above the more abject of his miserable calling. The class had, in fact, some privileges. A lodging, such as it was, was readily granted to them in some of the out-houses; and the usual awmous (alms) of a handful of meal (called a gowpen) was scarce denied by the poorest cottager. The mendicant disposed these, according to their different quality, in various bags around his person, and thus carried about with him the principal part of his sustenance, which he literally received for the asking. At the houses of the gentry, his cheer was mended by scraps of broken meat, and perhaps a Scottish "twalpenny," or English penny, which was expended in snuff or whisky. In fact, these indolent peripatetics suffered much less real hardship and want of food than the poor peasants from whom they received alms. If, in addition to his personal qualifications, the mendicant chanced to be a King's Bedesman, or Blue-Gown, he belonged, in virtue thereof, to the aristocracy of his order, and was esteemed a person of great importance. These Bedesmen are an order of paupers to whom the Kings of Scotland were in the custom of distributing a certain alms, in conformity with the ordinances of the Catholic church, and who were expected in return to pray for the royal welfare and that of the state. This order is still kept up. Their number is equal to the number of years which his majesty has lived; and one Blue-Gown additional is put on the roll for every returning royal birth-day. On the same auspicious era each Bedesman receives a new cloak, or gown of coarse cloth, the colour light blue, with a pewter badge, which confers on them the general privilege of asking alms through all Scotland, - all laws

* Like the Maundy pensioners in London,

against sorning, masterful beggary, and every other species of mendicity, being suspended in favour of this privileged class. With his cloak, each receives a leathern purse, containing as many shillings Scots (videlicet, pennies sterling) as the sovereign is years old; the zeal of their intercession for the king's long life receiving, it is to be supposed, a great stimulus from their own present and increasing interest in the object of their prayers. On the same occasion one of the royal chaplains preaches a sermon to the Bedesmen, who (as one of the reverend gentlemen expressed himself) are the most impatient and inattentive audience in the world. Something of this may arise from a feeling on the part of the Bedesmen, that they are paid for their own devotions, not for listening to those of others. Or, more probably, it arises from impatience, natural, though indecorous, in men bearing so venerable a character, to arrive at the conclusion of the ceremonial of the royal birth-day, which, so far as they are concerned, ends in a lusty breakfast of bread and ale: the whole moral and religious exhibition terminating in the advice of Johnson's "hermit hoar" to his proselyte,

- "Come, my lad, and drink some beer." Of the charity bestowed on these aged Bedesmen in money and clothing, there are many records in the treasurer's accompts. The following extract, kindly supplied by Mr. Mac Donald of the Register Housemay interest those whose taste is

akin to that of Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns.

"Item, for sextene elnis bukrum to the

saidis gownis, price of the elne x s.

Inde, viij li. "Item, twentie four pursis, and in ilk purse twentie four schilling, Inde, xxviij li. xvj s. "Item, the price of ilk purse iiij d. Inde, viij s. "Item, for making of the saidis gownis, viij li.

(We omit the other examples.)

I have only to add, that although the institution of King's Bedesmen still subsists, they are now seldom to be seen on the streets of Edin

burgh, of which their peculiar dress made them rather a characteristic feature. Having thus given an account of the genus and species to which Edie Ochiltree appertains, the author may add, that the individual he had in his eye was Andrew Gemmells, an old mendicant of the character described, who was many years since well known, and must still he remembered, in the vales of Gala, Tweed, Ettrick, Yarrow, and the adjoining country. The author has in his youth repeatedly seen and conversed with Andrew, but cannot recollect whether he held the rank of Blue-Gown. He was a remarkably fine old figure, very tall, and maintaining a soldierlike, or military manner and address. His features were intelligent, with a powerful expression of sarcasm. His motions were always so graceful, that he might almost have been suspected of having studied them; for he might, on any occasion, have served as a model for an artist, so remarkably striking were his ordinary attitudes. Andrew Gemmells had little of the cant of his calling; his wants were food and shelter, or a trifle of money, which he always claimed, and seemed to receive as his due. He sung a good song, told a good story, and could crack a severe jest with all the acumen of Shakspeare's jesters, though without using, like them, the cloak of insanity. It was some fear of Andrew's satire, as much as a feeling of kindness or charity, which secured him