en William Rufus used to go to dinner in it. All business is
driven forward. The landmarks of our fathers, if I may so call them, are
removed, and planted farther up into the day; insomuch, that I am afraid
our clergy will be obliged, if they expect full congregations, not to
look any more upon ten o'clock in the morning as a canonical hour. In
my own memory, the dinner has crept by degrees from twelve o'clock to
three, and where it will fix nobody knows.

I have sometimes thought to draw up a memorial in the behalf of Supper
against Dinner, setting forth, that the said Dinner has made several
encroachments upon the said Supper, and entered very far upon his
frontiers; that he has banished him out of several families, and in all
has driven him from his headquarters, and forced him to make his retreat
into the hours of midnight; and, in short, that he is now in danger of
being entirely confounded and lost in a breakfast. Those who have read
Lucian, and seen the complaints of the letter T against S, upon account
of many injuries and usurpations of the same nature, will not, I
believe, think such a memorial forced and unnatural. If dinner has been
thus postponed, or, if you please, kept back from time to time, you may
be sure that it has been in compliance with the other business of the
day, and that supper has still observed a proportionable distance. There
is a venerable proverb which we have all of us heard in our infancy, of
"putting the children to bed, and laying the goose to the fire." This
was one of the jocular sayings of our forefathers, but maybe properly
used in the literal sense at present. Who would not wonder at this
perverted relish of those who are reckoned the most polite part of
mankind, that prefer sea-coals and candles to the sun, and exchange so
many cheerful morning hours, for the pleasures of midnight revels and
debauches? If a man was only to consult his health, he would choose to
live his whole time, if possible, in daylight, and to retire out of
the world into silence and sleep, while the raw damps and unwholesome
vapours fly abroad, without a sun to disperse, moderate, or control
them. For my own part, I value an hour in the morning as much as common
libertines do an hour at midnight. When I find myself awakened into
being, and perceive my life renewed within me, and at the same time see
the whole face of nature recovered out of the dark uncomfortable state
in which it lay for several hours, my h