Opimian, dining with his
friend Squire Gryll; 'a curiously complicated misnomer. We have an
excellent old vegetable, the artichoke, of which we eat the head; we
have another of subsequent introduction, of which we eat the root, and
which we also call artichoke, because it resembles the first in flavour,
although, _me judice_, a very inferior affair. This last is a species of
the helianthus, or sunflower genus of the _Syngenesia frustranea_ class
of plants. It is therefore a girasol, or turn-to-the-sun. From this
girasol we have made Jerusalem, and from the Jerusalem artichoke we make
Palestine soup.'

_Mr. Gryll._ A very good thing, doctor.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ A very good thing; but a palpable misnomer.

_Mr. Gryll._ I am afraid we live in a world of misnomers, and of a worse
kind than this. In my little experience I have found that a gang of
swindling bankers is a respectable old firm; that men who sell their
votes to the highest bidder, and want only 'the protection of the
ballot' to sell the promise of them to both parties, are a free and
independent constituency; that a man who successively betrays everybody
that trusts him, and abandons every principle he ever professed, is a
great statesman, and a Conservative, forsooth, _a nil conservando_; that
schemes for breeding pestilence are sanitary improvements; that the test
of intellectual capacity is in swallow, and not in digestion; that the
art of teaching everything, except what will be of use to the recipient,
is national education; and that a change for the worse is reform. Look
across the Atlantic. A Sympathiser would seem to imply a certain degree
of benevolent feeling. Nothing of the kind. It signifies a ready-made
accomplice in any species of political villainy. A Know-Nothing would
seem to imply a liberal self-diffidence--on the scriptural principle
that the beginning of knowledge is to know that thou art ignorant.
No such thing. It implies furious political dogmatism, enforced by
bludgeons and revolvers. A Locofoco is the only intelligible term:
a fellow that would set any place on fire to roast his own eggs. A
Filibuster is a pirate under national colours; but I suppose the word in
its origin implies something virtuous: perhaps a friend of humanity.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ More likely a friend of roaring-(Greek
phrase)--in the sense in which roaring is used by our old dramatists;
for which see Middleton's _Roaring Girl_, and the commentators thereo