; i.e., restrain your wonder.

The dead vast; i.e., the dead void.

Armed at point; i.e., armed at all points.

Did address itself to motion; i.e., made a motion.

Give it an understanding, etc.; i.e., understand, but do not speak of it.

I will requite your loves, or, as we should say, I will repay your
friendship.

CX. DISSERTATION ON ROAST PIG.

Charles Lamb (b. 1775, d. 1834) was born in London. He was educated at
Christ's Hospital, where he was a schoolfellow and intimate friend of
Coleridge. In 1792 he became a clerk in the India House, London, and in
1825 he retired from his clerkship on a pension of 441 Pounds. Lamb never
married, but devoted his life to the care of his sister Mary, who was at
times insane. He wrote "Tales founded on the Plays of Shakespeare," and
several other works of rare merit; but his literary fame rests principally
on the inimitable "Essays of Elia" (published originally in the "London
Magazine"), from one of which the following selection is adapted.

1. Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging
enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate
their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they
do in Abyssinia to this day.

2. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the
second chapter of his "Mundane Mutations," where he designates a kind of
golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The
manuscript goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling
(which I take to be the elder brother), was accidentally discovered in the
manner following:

3. The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as
his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care
of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing
with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape
into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration
over every part of their poor mansion till it was reduced to ashes.

4. Together with the cottage,--a sorry, antediluvian makeshift of a
building, you may think it,--what was of much more importance, a fine
litter of newborn pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs
have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest periods we
read of.

5. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much
for the sake o