the least doubt of it,--true of one man or a million."

"Fate is Fat: Fat is Fate."

V.--NOCTURNE.

Romanza (_affettuoso_).
The Choral Gamut (_con espressione_).

Was that seething sun never again to plunge his lurid face beneath the
waves of old Ocean? Had some latter-day Joshua arisen, and with stern
fiat nailed him in mid-heavens, blazing forever? To me as slowly rolled
the westering orb down that final slope as ever turned the wheel of
Fortune to Murad the Unlucky. Perchance the sun-god had turned cook, and
now, burning with 'prentice zeal, and scoffing at Duespeptos and all
sound hygiene, was aiming to make of this terrestrial ball one
illimitable fry turned over and well done,--a fry ever doing and never
done, which should simmer and fizzle on eternally down the ages. An
abstract fry--let me here record it--suits me passing well; yet I like
not the concrete and personal broil. I trip gayly to a feast, prepared
to eat, but not, as in the supper of Polonius, to be eaten. I have very
little of the martyr-stuff about me. It is well, it is glorious, to read
of those fine things; but does any man relish the application of the
_Hoc age_? To beatified Lawrence I gladly pay meet tribute of tears and
praise. Let the luckless one ask of me no more; let him call only upon
the succulent; let him recruit among the full ranks of the adipose. Be
it mine to lay these spare-ribs athwart no gridiron more fervid than the
pavement of his own monumental Escurial. _Suum cuique._

So, albeit in a melting mood, I gazed listlessly upon the brazen
firmament, with no fellow-feeling for those hot culinary bars. The
broiling glow was not at all tempting: I think it would have staggered
even the gay salamander that is said to accept so thoroughly the gospel
of caloric. And what was the Markerstown without the Great Captain? What
was the Victory with no Nelson? Hence, like the patriarch, I went out to
meditate at the eventide. But, alack! there were no camels, no Rebekah,
no comfort. Even in subterranean grots there was nothing drawn but
Tropic's XXX. Every water-cock let on a geyser. But by-and-by Apollo
Archimagirus, wearying of gastronomy, stayed his hand, moistened the
fierce flames, jerked the half-fried earth out into free space, pocketed
his stew-pan, and flung himself supperless to bed. No more, for the
nonce at least, should that new Lycidas--the cosmical gridiron--flame in
the forehead of the evening sky. Anon came twil