rapprochement was still more easily effected; and I could myself tell of changes of opinion acquired in this way, which a rash press and a rasher public ascribed to very different agency.

This, it may be said, is taking low ground for the defence, and I agree with you-but I do so in deference to the attack, since nothing could possibly be lower than that. I want the Viceroy to be maintained, as a dinner-giver the more, in a city which, hospitable as it is, is not over rich. I want a house where I can sit next the Grandmaster, who drinks the Glorious and Immortal Memory, on one hand, and Father Cullen on the other. I want to dine as well as 1 could in Belgrave Square, with a far wittier and more genial society than all the Squares for ten miles round Belgrave could compass. And more than all, I want to hear how an Englishman of mark and note, in the favour of his sovereign and the confidence of his party, thinks of us, and talks of us; for let him be as reserved as he may, his judgment of Irishmen will ooze out as the claret goes round, and even his very concealments will have their significance.

Now, why grudge us this? Do you not every month of your lives spend more money on that endless lawsuit of "Armstrong versus Whitworth and others" than would maintain a Viceroy for Ireland in double splendour? Is there a cupola ship changed to a broadsider, or an unserviceable three-decker converted into an impossible frigate, without costing the nation the charge of many Viceroys? Why, you expended more money t'other day in running away from the King of Dahomey than would have kept up the Irish Viceroy for ten years.

Mind, I do not affect to say that I want the Viceroy as a Governor in the same sense that you send one to India. I ask for him as a measure of that equality you are always pretending to extend to us,

but never in reality confer. We have our Law-courts and our University; they are not necessarily shams because they are in Ireland. Why not have our Court-receptions also? It is not the Queen's pleasure to visit us. More's the pity; but when she does, let us not lose the habits which may fit us for her presence.

When the foreman of an Irish jury, in a case where an English nobleman of large fortune was the defendant, was asked how the jury ever had the conscience to award such a sum in damages as forty thousand pounds? It was a great deal, sure enough," he said, but we all agreed it was a fine thing to bring all that money into Ireland.”

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Now, is it not a fine thing to bring five-and-twenty thousand annually into a city not overburdened with cash, and "take it out" afterwards in dinners and evening parties?

66

Look at it even as a normal school of politeness, and it has much in its favour. Imagine her Majesty coming over to Dublin and holding a levee, and not an alderman able to kneel down without prostrating himself on his face," as a Lord Mayor called it; or a drawing-room where, as the same civic authority observed, none of the ladies could advance backwards." Think of the distractions of Gold-sticks and Bedchamber people at the untrained demonstrations of a very demonstrative people. It is but fair to let us have as much annual training as you accord to the Yeomanry.

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Now, having said so much for retaining the office, a word for the man who is to hold it. There are two or three small changes I should like to suggest. First, I would abolish the privilege of knighting. No one, no matter how high his station in a free country, should have the power to make another maneven a Lord Mayor-ridiculous.

Secondly, I would do away with the kissing-we ought to do that for ourselves. To be sure, it is not

all to the credit side of the Viceroy's book. There are now and then Celtic specimens of beauty in the shape of austere mothers that might make his Excellency doubt whether he had not better have remained in the " Colonies;" but he must take these with the lot.

This reminds me of what his Majesty George IV. said, as he saw a twinkle of malice in a waitinglord's eye, when a very old and illfavoured countess had just been submitted to the royal embrace: "Never mind," said the King, in a whisper, "I had my revenge; I kissed her daughter twice yesterday." I say, I'd do away with this, and I'd give a compensation-say two thousand a-year if the Viceroy was an old man, five if young; but in return I should insist on more dinners. Lastly, I would suggest that one-half of the gentlemen-inwaiting should be briefless barristers, the pleasantest class in the country, and well worthy of some sort of recognition.

Leave us, therefore, leave us what the Prussian calls our "Hegemony." I trust I am employing a decent expression, but I am not quite clear on the subject. Leave it to us,

whatever it is, if it be good for us; don't despoil us of the small modicum of gold we used once to be so proud of when we had gingerbread; and as you have deprived us of Donybrook Fair, at least leave us our St Patrick's Ball.

If, however, it be the intention of our rulers to abolish the office, what could have induced them to mark its approaching extinction by naming Lord Carlisle to the post? Why accompany its decline and fall by regrets all the more poignant ? Why join to the loss of certain material benefits the greater loss that attaches to the rupture of ties of affection and deep regard? I have never been in Ireland since his Viceroyalty; but I am told on all sides, and by men of all parties, such traits of his kindliness, his generosity, and his goodness, - I have heard of such instances of his thoughtful benevolence, that I can feel what Ireland must have lost by his departure-a sorrow all the deeper from the cause that produced it.

If it be a policy to extinguish the Viceroyalty, Lord Carlisle should never have been amongst the last to hold it.

Of all the salutations that ever were devised to express hearty good-will and large substantial friendship, recommend us to that of the Orientals-"May your shadow never be less!" Maceration, as a rule of life, is suitable only for hermits, anchorites, and suchlike recluses, who have faith in the efficacy of parched pease, and whose type of beatitude is the scarecrow. Orthodoxy is allied to plumpness, and a certain breadth of beam is most becoming to a high dignitary of the Church. In the man of portly presence we expect to find and rarely indeed are we disappointed in our expectations — a warm heart, a kindly benevolent disposition, comprehensive charity, and a conscience void of offence. We feel that in such a man we can repose implicit trust-we can make him the depositary of our secrets without fear of betrayal-we can depend upon his good offices when we need the assistance of a friend. Very different are our sensations when we chance to encounter a gaunt herring-gutted individual of the human species, who, like the evil kine seen by royal Pharaoh in his dream, will not fatten upon the fairest pasture. His sharp looks and low-set hungry jaw instinctively beget distrust. He has the eye of a usurer, the yawn of an ogre, the gripe of a bailiff; and being utterly destitute of bowels, he yearns not for the calamities of his kind. Shrewd was the observation of Cæsar,

"Let me have men about me that are fat Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o'

night.

Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look; I like him not-such men are dangerous.'

Julius, who was in perfect training, and did not weigh a single pound more than the standard of his

height would justify, saw the danger, and would have prevented it. His keen eye detected the conspirator and assassin under the unwholesome skin of the ascetic; but Antony, who was somewhat pudding-headed, and whom a liberal diet of quails and venison had lulled into a chronic habit of goodnature, felt no suspicion, and even tried to vindicate the character of the leanest villain of the age.

We therefore, being anxious that good men should abound, have a kindly feeling for the corpulent. It is a notable fact in criminal statistics that no fat man was ever convicted of the crime of murder. Stout people are not revengeful; nor, as a general rule, are they agitated by gusts of passion. Few murderers weigh more than ten stone. There are, however, exceptions, which justify us in assuming eleven as the utmost limit of the sliding-scale, but beyond that there is no impulse towards homicide. Seldom has such a phenomenon as a fat housebreaker been paraded at a criminal bar. It is your lean, wiry fellow who works with the skeleton-keys, forces himself through closet-windows which seemingly would scarce suffice for the entrance of the necessary cat, steals with noiseless step along the lobby and up the stairs, glides into the chamber sacred for more than half a century to the chaste repose of the gentle Tabitha, and with husky voice, and the exhibition of an enormous carving-knife, commands silence on pain of instant death, and delivery of her cash and jewels. It is your attenuated thief who insinuates himself under beds, skulks behind counters, dives into tills, or makes prey of articles of commerce arrayed at shop-doors for the temptation of the credulous

passenger. A corpulent burglar is as much out of place and as little to be feared as was Falstaff at Gadshill-and what policeman ever yet gave chase to a depredator as bulky as a bullock? Corpulence, we maintain, is the outward sign not only of a good constitution, but of inward rectitude and virtue. There is, however, such a thing as over-cultivation; and we should be sorry if any one, misled by these our preliminary remarks, should think that we are attempting to elevate pinguitude to the rank of a cardinal virtue. Men are not pigs, to be estimated entirely by the standard of weight; and though, in a certain sense, the late Daniel Lambert was one of the greatest men that ever lived, we certainly do not hold him forth as a suitable example for imitation. But we cannot give in to the theory that plumpness is a positive misfortune; and we are decidedly opposed to a system which proscribes as deleterious and unwholesome such articles of food as are the best known and most universally accepted-which is essentially coarse and carnivorous, and though possibly well adapted for the training of a brutal gladiator, is in every respect unfitting for the nutriment of a reasonable Christian.

Seldom has fame descended with such amazing rapidity upon the shoulders of any man as upon those of Mr William Banting, late of No. 27 St James's Street, Piccadilly. Little more than a year ago his name was unknown beyond the limited but respectable circle of his acquaintance; now it has become a household word, and the doctrines which he has promulgated in his pamphlet have been adopted by thousands who acknowledge him as their instructor and guide. Though not professing to be the actual discoverer of a dietetic tem which can cure or at least prevent many of the ills to which flesh is heir, he claims to be its first intelligible exponent; and as he uses

sys

terms or tech

hich medical

none of the exotic nical phrases with men so commonly enwrap their meaning as to render it utterly ob scure, but writes in plain, homely English, without any scientific nomenclature, he has found a ready and numerous audience. In vain do members of the Faculty-not unjustifiably incensed by the accusations levelled at their order by this intruder into their own peculiar walk-insist that there is no novelty in the system, though its ap plication may be of doubtful expediency. Mr Banting replies that for thirty years and upwards he has been in search of a remedy against increasing corpulence, and has received no salutary counsel from any physician save the last, who regulated his diet.

he says,

an eminent

"None of my family,' the side of either parent, had any tendency to corpulence, and from my dread of such a calamity; so, when I earliest years I had an inexpressible was between thirty and forty years of age, finding a tendency to it creeping upon me, I consulted surgeon, now long deceased-a kind personal friend-who recommended increased bodily exertion before ordinary daily labours began, and thought rowing an excellent plan. I had the command of a good heavy life-boat, lived near the river, and adopted it for a couple of hours in the early morning. It is true I gained muscular vigour, but with it a prodigious appetite, which I was compelled to indulge, and consequently increased in weight, until my kind old friend advised me to forsake

my

the exercise. He soon afterwards died; and as the tendency to corpulence remained, I consulted other high orthodox authorities (never any inferior adviser), but all in vain. I have tried sea air and bathing in various localities, with much walking exercise; taken gallons of physic and liquor potassæ advisedly and abundantly; riding on horseback; the waters of Leamington many times, as well as those of Cheltenham and Harrogate frequently; have lived upon it, if bodily labour may be so construed ; sixpence a-day, so to speak, and earned and have spared no trouble nor expense in consultations with the best authorities in the land, giving each and all a

fair time for experiment, without any permanent remedy, as the evil still gradually increased."

This is no doubt a sweeping charge against the Faculty; but when we consider it minutely, it appears to us that Mr Banting is somewhat unreasonable in his complaints. True, he was possessed with a morbid horror for corpulence, and was vehemently desirous to get rid of some superfluous flesh which seemed to be rapidly accumulating; but we are nowhere told that his health had been impaired in the slightest degree-indeed, the following passage leads us to the direct opposite conclusion :—

When," says he, "a corpulent man eats, drinks, and sleeps well, has no pain to complain of, and no particular organic disease, the judgment of able men seems paralysed; for I have been generally informed that corpulence is one of the natural results of increasing years; indeed, one of the ablest authorities as a physician in the land told me he had gained one pound in weight every year since he attained manhood, and was not surprised at my condition, but advised more bodily exercise, vapourbaths, and shampooing, in addition to the medicine given. Yet the evil still increased, and, like the parasite of barnacles on a ship, if it did not destroy

the structure, it obstructed its fair comfortable progress in the path of life."

The "obstruction" to which Mr Banting alludes, seems to have been nothing more than an extreme dislike to be twitted on the score of punchiness. He says, with undeniable truth, that

"Any one so afflicted is often subject to public remark; and though in conscience he may care little about it, I am confident no man labouring under obesity can be quite insensible to the sneers and remarks of the cruel and injudicious in public assemblies, public vehicles, or the ordinary street-traffic; nor to the annoyance of finding no adequate space in a public assembly, if he

should seek amusement or need refresh

ment; and therefore he naturally keeps away as much as possible from places where he is likely to be made the object

of the taunts and remarks of others. am as regardless of public remark as

most men, but I have felt those difficulties, and therefore avoided such circumscribed accommodation and notice, and many advantages to health and comby that means have been deprived of fort."

All that may be perfectly true, but we cannot see how it justifies his accusation of the doctors. Because cabmen and street-boys make impertinent remarks about stature

because querulous people in the pit of the theatre object to having a human screen interposed between them and the spectacle-because an elderly gentleman cannot contrive to squeeze himself with comfort into an opera stall, or the narrow box of a chophouse, is it the duty of a physician to recommend such stringent measures as will make him a walking skeleton? It is the business of a doctor to cure disease, not to minister to personal vanity; and if Mr Banting ate, drank, and slept well, and was affected by no actual complaint, we really cannot understand why he should have been so pertinacious in demanding medical assistance. We are acquainted with many estimable persons of both sexes, turning considerably more than fifteen stone in the scales-a

heavier weight than Mr Banting has

ever attained-whose health is unto scorn the idea of applying to a exceptionable, and who would laugh doctor for recipe or regimen which might have the effect of marring their developed comeliness. What right, we ask, has Mr Banting to brand Obesity as one of the most distressing parasites that affect humanity," while, by his own confession, he has never reached that point of corporeal bulk which is generally regarded as seemly and suitable to Bishops, Deans, Mayors, Provosts, Aldermen, Bailies, and even Dowagers of high degree? We deny that a man weighing but a trifle above fourteen stone is entitled to call himself obese. It may be that such a one is not qualified

to exhibit himself as a dancer on the tight rope, or to take flying