ow an Englishman will be able to
reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the
earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take
his appetite along with him, (which it seems to me hardly possible to
believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition,) the
immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during
which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not
an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of
dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest
characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened
itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with
Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and
ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting
the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less
complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy.
Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which
his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to
conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for
the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was
of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a
delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents
the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at
Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only
because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more
acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English
taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and
poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately
implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though
still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of
virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in
midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which,
elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges
of Tartarus.

Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a
kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon
the table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due
reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoym