tell you about my first patient, and of how I became possessed of the ring. Whether it was the mere fact of my having made my introductory bow to the world as a medical practitioner, through the circumstance with which I have acquainted you, or whether it was the melancholy character of the circumstance itself, I know not: but the whole affair is as vividly impressed upon my mind at this moment, and comes back to me through the mist and moil of thirty years, as freshly as if had only happened yesterday.

A DIRGE BY AN OLD "DINER OUT."

IF it be true that the cuisine of a nation will indicate the character of a people, where, in this vast metropolis, are we to look for those timehonoured institutions which were once the bulwarks of our courage, strength, and independence? Need I say that I am alluding to the "Taverns" which once graced the City with their low but hospitable portals? When, with all the long-cherished recollections of fifty years I traverse street after street between the gate of Lud-not yet destroyed, thank the Corporation-and the Folgate-only a stone stanchion of which is left-can I fail to require both the loyalty of a good citizen and the stamina imparted by a now interrupted series of dinners, which alone prevent my sitting down upon the steps of the Royal Exchange to weep and wail at the desolation that has changed the jolly hostelries of old, where generous meats and drinks found a congenial home, into the gaudy palaces in which misery and discomfort are but the more horrible for the cheap glitter of their settings. Will anybody point to the so-called dining-rooms-faugh! can a gentleman, a philosopher, a man of sense, sit down in a crowd to eat his food, with the odour of a hundred ill-cooked dishes blending in one filthy exhalation round his head; while the modicums of fat raw meat, drowned in the last dish washings, misnamed gravy, and the three unpeeled waxy potatoes, their accompaniment, make him fly from food with loathing, and wander through the byeways in the endeavour to drown disgust in the bowl-an object which is frustrated by the untimely decadence of the bowl itself, the place of that truly British implement being supplied by long ghastly glasses of stale camomile tea, called "bitter ale," bad sherry, or insufferable lemonade, presented with the announcement that "we are all iced here!" Iced! ha ha! The British people will be a fine race, truly, when they have declined from the roast beef and generous bowl of their fathers, and live upon fried "gouffres" and penny ices! Ha, ha! now I feel better !

Mine be the grateful task to resuscitate the glories of those fine old haunts, where men once met to rub off the rust of daily care and toil— to laugh, to-no! the words of no cominon roundelay shall profane my subject, although we did quaff—but to mingle in right good fellowship, to drink and-yes, to eat.

There's no eating now in the City, we can only swallow quantities of

unwholesome food; there's no drinking-we can only gulp nasty decoctions. But I'm getting too familiar-let me on, and begin to wail the decay of ancient Taverns!

Why was the "Fleece and Sun" pulled down? just tell me that, oh, London Corporation! Think ye that anything is gained by that wanton violation of the very principle by which bodies like yourselves have been sustained? I speak boldly, and tell ye that I mean eating! Ah-even a feeble hand may sometimes strike a chord which suggests a master-piece of music; so, perhaps, may my complaint yet stir the hearts of some of our literati—all good friends to the bowl and trencher —that they may more worthily wake the praises of "The Fleece."

I cannot write of thee in the past, oh, snug retreat. Let me for a while conjure thee up again; and in imagination, at least, eat my dinner o'er again.

It is one at noon, and I have been on 'Change, where the cool air that circles round our queen and gives her royal face an Ethiop tinge, by smutting it with blacks from civic fires, has so excited my digestive remembrancer that, passing on at once, and not even stopping to look in at Lloyd's, I walk at a smart but dignified pace along the upper end of Threadneedle-street. No cock that crows even with American shrillness can wile me to the left, for I already-like the notorious Fee-faw-fum-smell the blood of every Englishman, in the shape of beeves and muttons, whole and dissected, which hang in picturesque confusion in the halls of the renowned Banister (last relic of a glorious day), above whose portals the lion and unicorn of the royal arms seem to be contending for their share of animal food even before feeding time.

There lies a dainty loin, pink and white, which might have belonged to one of the sheep whose auriferous hides gave the name, perhaps, to my beloved tavern. The sloping chop at the end carries no bone, and already lies before me upon a half sheet of writing paper. Who is that portly man in the loose "tail-coat" with large inside pockets, just now turning the corner, with the same object as myself? It is great upon the Stock Exchange; and here come names worth more thousands than I have half-crown pieces, but I am their equal for the nonce;-man can eat but enough, and the generous food knows no distinctions.

and

Bow your head gently, stranger, while a smile of anticipatory satisfaction overspreads your honest visage. I will first pass under the low but open portal, which almost yields to receive us, like a stooping mother's arms: a little snug red-curtained bar on the right hand-a plain dark wood counter on the other. Ensconced in the former sanctum sit the presiding maidens (daughters of the proprietor, I believe), my most charming friends (at present), and deft comminglers of whisky toddy; behind them, ah! what bottles-rosy full-bodied ones-snug squat squares, which look as though they contained choice essences, and were hugging them to prevent escape-long taper necks, with a cool, unintoxicating, simple look in their graceful forms—and sly decanters that wink and twinkle in the fire-light beyond. On the counter stand the " rummers," the "punchbowls," "crowns," and those of other sizes, and over all the goodly scene is shed a fragrance of lemon-peel, of pine-apple, and of mysterious, but too delicious compounds, which

waft towards the door in gales like those of Araby the blest-or, rather, a good deal better than any of this sort that ever found their way so far. But I pass on, and beyond the stairs lies our ultimatum. Here, in the box by the fire, will I take my seat, for I can exchange a word with the cook-woman of wonderful skill-while my dinner but provokes me by its appetizing frizzle, as it rests upon the huge gridiron. Yes, here she is, presiding goddess of so fair a scene; the huge fire not roaring-no, no, that she never allows it to do, but pats it, pokes it, even cold-pigs it into the humour she requires-while the great gridiron, which might broil a sheep, reeks with a score of cutlets, chops, and steaks. I place my own upon the top of the wooden screen which separates my charmer from the fire, and there await her skill. Flushed with the heat, and the ardour of her high vocation, what a woman!-mortal, too—for she is sometimes susceptible to contradiction, or even to the undue witticisms of unthinking younglings; the more weighty men treat her with a grave regard. She stands and turns with her tongs the cutlets of her hundred clients, till, with her accumulated gains the well-earned meed of such uncommon skill-she departs, perhaps to open a "Sally's" or a "Jenny's" on her own account, or even to marry some faithful swain who has long loved .broils and her.

Can I pretend to unravel the mnemonics of that great gridiron. Is it that on which St. Lawrence met his death? No, let such speculations pass, while I wonder that everybody there has received, or will receive, his own particular chop, or steak, or cut-and here, and. here is mine! hot, how hot! upon a platter of the cleanest pewter, bearing upon its beaming face the scars of hosts of knives;-how the gravy follows the knife,-ho! ho!-potatoes, yes, large as Irish hearts! -how, with the skins?-heed them not, they will peel like eggs, for they are baked in steam. Oh! Heliogabalus, what a feast-now drink. Have you never heard of our Scotch ale? here comes a quart of it, foaming in laughing bubbles, over the thin edge of the burnished tankard. Give ME one, too! and so, with an inclination of the head over the cool sparkling draught Ha ha! say no more- -I have

dined.

Have dined! but cannot so dine again. The last time I saw the Fleece and Sun was on the occasion of her most gracious Majesty's visit to the City. There in the room of my dear tavern, while the illuminations flashed and the mob roared and trampled beyond, sat I, in company with three friends-one now in another and a new landand quaffed such a draft, while our graceful “straws threw the light vapours of the soothing weed over a scene so soon to be ruthlessly swept away. I have dined in taverns since-the London and the Albany; it would be ungrateful in me to say that at neither of these have I witnessed that happy state in which—a man's thumbs inserted in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his legs stretched out beneath the table, while the now disused napkin falls in graceful folds upon his knee-he ejaculates, "Ha! very good dinner," and throws a smile of benevolent repletion across to his opposite neighbour. But where, I ask, am I to find that simple perfection of plenitude which has departed with the "Fleece?"