him at any hour from two to five, he insists on your
taking _tiffin_: and such a tiffin! The English corresponding term is
luncheon: but how meagre a shadow is the European meal to its glowing
Asiatic cousin! Still, gloriously as tiffin shines, does anybody imagine
that it is a vicarious dinner, or ever meant to be the substitute of
dinner? Wait till eight, and you will have your eyes opened on that
subject. So of the Roman _prandium_: had it been as luxurious as it was
simple, still it was always viewed as something meant only to stay the
stomach, as a prologue to something beyond. The _prandium_ was far enough
from giving the feeblest idea of the English luncheon; yet it stood in the
same relation to the Roman day. Now to English_men_ that meal scarcely
exists; and were it not for women, whose delicacy of organization does
not allow them to fast so long as men, would probably be abolished. It is
singular in this, as in other points, how nearly England and ancient Rome
approximate. We all know how hard it is to tempt a man generally into
spoiling his appetite, by eating before dinner. The same dislike of
violating what they called the integrity of the appetite, [_integram
famem_,] existed at Rome. Every man who knows anything of Latin critically,
sees the connection of the word _integer_ with _in_ and _tetigi_: _integer_
means what is _intact_, unviolated by touch. Cicero, when protesting
against spoiling his appetite for dinner, by tasting anything beforehand,
says, _integram famem ad coenam afferam_; I shall bring to dinner an
appetite untampered with. Nay, so much stress did the Romans lay on
maintaining this primitive state of the appetite undisturbed, that any
prelusions with either _jentaculum_ or _prandium_ were said, by a very
strong phrase indeed, _polluere famem_, to pollute the sanctity of the
appetite. The appetite was regarded as a holy vestal flame, soaring upwards
towards dinner throughout the day: if undebauched, it tended to its natural
consummation in _coena_: expired like a phoenix, to rise again out of its
own ashes. On this theory, to which language had accommodated itself, the
two prelusive meals of nine o'clock, A.M., and of one, P.M., so far from
being ratified by the public sense, and adopted into the economy of the
day, were regarded gloomily as gross irregularities, enormities, debauchers
of the natural instinct; and, in so far as they thwarted that instinct,
lessened it, or depraved it, were un