ent which such
reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest
abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty
years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and
indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost
the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the
earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of
his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my
countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too
much to affirm, that, on this side of the water, people never dine. At
any rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material
requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in
America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and
our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a
happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of
culture which we have attained.

It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen
know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of
the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that
particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often
present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which,
while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were
thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It
could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal
enjoyment, because out of the very perfection of that lower bliss there
had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the
master-pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible,
a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension,
vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to
recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set
of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special
fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only
eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by
the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a
little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle,
delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most
exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a c