In such an age, with such ele- France" can be preserved, even ments as these around us, greatness though it be represented by a foot is surely not difficult of attainment; upon a friend's throat, and a hand and the "Dignified Attitude of in a neighbour's pocket. MR. BANTING. to I was very wroth for a consider- We used to be disgusted at the able time with that fat man-Mr. aldermanic envy of the beggar Banting I think he is called-who who declared he had not eaten has been boring the world for some for twenty-four hours, expressing months back with accounts of his itself in the outburst, "Oh, if I decrease in size, till I bethought had your appetite!" but what me that possibly I might have shall we say to this mass of heaving been doing him a foul wrong, and blubber that only cries out to be imputing to selfish motives, and a decreased, of repletion that implores taste for notoriety, what in reality to be drained, in the very crisis of might turn out to be very high- cotton-famine, of Irish want, and of minded and elevated patriotism. almost universal destitution! When the Queen of France suggested giving brioche to the starving populace, she was only ignorant, not unfeeling. When a Duke of Norfolk proposed curry-powder the famine-stricken in Ireland, he was simply talking like a very kindhearted but addle-headed old gentleman, who knew nothing of the malady for which he was prescrib ing. But here is far worse: here is a man who, in a day of great pressure and want, when the energy of every thoughtful man is taxed to think by what contrivance the souls and bodies of some hundred thousand people are to be held together, comes forward to tell us, not how to support life, not how to keep the spark alight with some cheap substitute for fuel, not how to maintain the faint flicker alive by some newly-found expedient, but how he has contrived to keep down his own redundant heat-to put slack upon the over-exuberant blaze of his own personal hearth. My first impression was, Here is a corpulent old humbug, who has no greater or more ennobling task in life than to measure his girth round the waist, weigh his fat sides, and keep a register of his palpitations as he goes up-stairs to bed-publishing, too, to the world these experiences, as if they were great boons and blessings to humanity, and proclaiming aloud how and by what subtle devices he contrived to grow thinner; and all this nasty balderdash-nasty it unquestionably is-in a land where misery and destitution abound, and where we read such a heading to a paragraph in our newspapers as "Death by Starvation." Of what stuff must a man be made who can see his digestional diary printed in the same column that reveals a death from actual want? Of what, besides "fat," must a creature be compounded, who can go on from day to day recording the effects produced upon his heavy carcass by abstention from saccharine matter and suchlike, when the great monster Misery stares us in the face--that there are people without any food at all-that there are men and women, blue-lipped and gaunt with famine, hollow eyed and jaw - sunken, crawling about in search of garbage and offal? Can indecency and selfishness go farther? Corpulency is unpleasant, so is a tight boot; but don't expatiate on either to people who are hungry or who go barefoot. Your coat may be too tight in the sleeve, but don't talk of it in the society of the halfnaked. And this is precisely what this fat man is doing! Good hea party of twelve Bantings would take fully a week's hard work, both chemical and culinary. Now, judg ing from the man's book, I suspect that he and eleven more like him would be dear at the price. vens! the ill of the world is not repletion, - it is emptiness; and all the other fat men are running about in their Own pluffy and breathless manner, asking, What about malt! How is it as to chocolate? Are anchovies bad for me? From Falstaff downwards I have Must I cut off my stilton? To ever liked fat men; they are all to these I say, Let me be your doctor. nothing the pleasantest fellows that Retrench your all-absorbing self- walk the earth. They are genial by interest. Turn your thoughts from force of temperament; and there your duodenum to the famishing is neither ungenerous sarcasm in creatures who peer down through their drollery nor malice in their the railings of your areas at the wit. They look, besides-and let blazing fire in your kitchen-grate. me tell you it is no small thingGive up this filthy selfishness that they look as if they enjoyed life; takes for its worship all that is while least worthy in humanity. Walk, ride, bathe, swim, fast if you must, but take your thoughts off this detestable theme; and try to remember that the subject you want to popularise is in its details one of the coarsest that can be made matter of conversation. "that lean and hungry Cassius" is a perpetual protest against pleasantry. His drolleries are all dyspeptic, and his very laugh is an estopper on fun. Why, in the name of all good-fellowship, diminish the number of these? Is the world too enjoyable ?-is society really so intensely amusing that it is necessary, even at the cost of our very flesh, to curb our wit and restrain our brilliancy? I have no complaint of this kind to make of the neighbourhood about me. I am free to say there is no plethora of agreeability that wants to be depleted. Mr. Banting's experiences are possibly different; but if so, I'd rather he'd tell me where he lives than what he eats-with whom he associates, and not what he avoids in diet. To take the matter in its less serious light, how is society to be carried on if Bantingism is to prevail? Are we to weed our acquaintance of all the fat people, and never know any one above ten stone eight? or are we to divide our dinners into fat days and thin days, having all the grampuses one day, all the sword-fish on another? This latter measure will be forced upon us, for how otherwise shall we feed our Bantings? To invite them to an ordinary repast of fish, flesh, and The glorious exuberance of the fowl, would be as rank an awk- fat man is not merely physical; it wardness as to ask Cardinal Wise- extends to the operations of his man to a beef-steak on a Friday. brain and the tricks of his fancy. You cannot, of course, place before It is out of his rich abundance that your guest what he would deem he gives you his drollery. Tell me little short of a poison; and how an anecdote or a good mot, a racy are you to eliminate all the carbon reply, or a witty rejoinder, and I'll out of your sirloin, the ozone out stake my reputation, or half-a-crown, of your vegetables, gelatinous mat--whichever you think best of ter out of your veal, and saccharine on it, that I'll tell you whether it ingredients out of your pudding? If was a fat or a thin man was the one couldn't afford to have Faraday in the kitchen, there will be no doing this. Analytical chemistry is not a very speedy performance, besides; and if this system be pursued, it will take at least two days to prepare a very humble meal; and a author. There is a mental breadth in the fat man, a width in his toleration, a glorious sense of easy absorption about him, that makes him infinitely more companionable than a thin man. When a friend of mine - who told me the story-once met Sydney Smith at Brighton, where he had gone to reduce by the use of certain baths in vogue in those days, he was struck by the decrease of Sydney's size, and said, "You are certainly thinner than when I saw you last." "Yes," said he; "I have only been ten days here, but they have scraped enough off me already to make a curate." And so it is, the imperceptible waste of fat men is equal to a thin one; and once again I say, it is of these they would rob us. Why, they are the very marrow of humanity. Possibly, however, I have been all this time unjust and unfair to Mr. Banting, and what I deemed a personal narrative was only a parable. Has Mr. B., while speaking. of himself, been really describing the state of England? Is this plethora this over-abundance, this bursting prosperity, this unwieldy size, this unmanageable mass-the Nation? Are all his counsels addressed to a people who have given themselves up to repletion, and think of nothing but growing fatter? Is the carbon of which he warns us our coal-fields, whose exhaustion he forebodes? When he speaks of saccharine matter, is it a hit at Gladstone about sugar? In this prohibition of beer does he want a repeal of the malt-tax, like the virtuous old ladies who gave up sugar in their tea to put down the slave-trade? Is the "going down stairs backwards" an emblem of that painful step-by-step progression in which, while we go lower and lower, we have not even the small courage required to look at what we are coming to? true. We did try it (at Sebastopol), and it reduced us uncommonly; and though we have contrived to get up our flesh since, we are forced to own that we are not as strong as we used to be! Now, I repeat this may be the true reading of the Banting epistle, and I am the more ready to believe it to be such that there are touches of true kindliness and honest philanthropy in the pamphlet, which would ill accord with a theme of mere selfishness. I am a very poor exponent of symbolic influences; but it would give me sincere pleasure to go over Banting with Dr. Cumming, whose aid in tracing the clues to the imagery would be invaluable. "Banting explained, with reference to the GREAT CORPULENCE COMING,'" would be a taking title, and I throw it out as hint to "the trade." One word more. If there really be people with so much disposable time on their hands, and so much redundant fat on their ribs, as Mr. Banting, and who eagerly desire to reduce, let me recommend to them a far simpler and easier process than the complicated chemistry of this gentleman's book. There is a little volume-I have it now before me called "A Summary Account of Prizes for Common Things," offered and awarded by Miss B. Coutts at the Whitelands Training Institution. In this valuable treatise, which may be called 'The AntiBanting,' the problem is, not to subdue the increase of flesh, but how to subsist on the smallest modicum of food? how soup is to be made with the minimum of meat? how vitality can be maintained with the very least possible assistance from external aid? In the remark that our size un- Amongst the variety of receipts in fits us for places of amusement," this volume there is one we recomand that "we take up more space "mend to Banting. It is a soup comthan our neighbours like to accord us, Mr. Banting is only repeating what French newspapers are daily telling us. Last of all, as to the "Turkish Bath," what he says is perfectly posed of what the writer calls the cheapest part of a cow-the fore vein, which lies between the neck and the shoulder, and is of an irregular shape. "The soup made from this, with barley, carrots, and an onion, Nor can I omit an invaluable suggestion at page 46, not alone admirable in its relation to diet, but with an ethical inference that deserves commemoration: "Whey, the liquid left after making cheese, is a nutritious drink for children. When in large quantities, it will materially assist in fattening - the Pigs!" is excellent." Now I say here you have no complications about osmazone or the phosphates; not a word is there of adipose matter, nitrogen, or that fell ingredient, sugar. Let the Bantings sit down to this every day at one o'clock as their principal meal, and I warrant them they'll be as slim in three months as the prize labourer who invented the compound. There is another Now, as I have taken some pains receipt for a broth to be made of to show where these culinary treawhat the writer calls "a sheep's sures are to be found, I trust Bantpluck," and pluck is exactly the ing and his whole house will try quality the eater of it would re- them. As to the contributors to quire. And there is also, at page the volume itself, I observe that in 203, "a cheap and nourishing dish most household expenditures there without meat," which it would be is a weekly penny dedicated to pea downright pleasure to set before riodicals. Might I ask a preferBanting every day for a month, and ence, and humble hint, in return have his report on its nutritive qua- for our own small services here exlities. Not to seem cruel, however, erted, that they would take in Corny I should allow him "beef-stickings' "O'Dowd, whose second volume will (see page 35) on Sundays. shortly appear in print? I have had it on my heart for many a day to protest against a race of politicians who have much annoyed and not a little troubled me -a class of men, who in the very absence of all convictions, assume a sort of especial claim to fairness, and who would like to pass off their thorough cold-bloodedness for the true and proper temperature of the political body. I mean those Hybrid Conservatives who profess to believe in their own party, but always vote with Lord Palmerston-men who would like to pass the morning in the Reform Club, and dine every day at the Carlton. A few years back they were three or four, now they are a distinct section. If England were not, par excellence, the land of "Sham," such a class would never have presumed to stand forward and declare their opinions. In a country so full of crotchets we are naturally tolerant of our neighbours' eccentricities; and if a man does not do actual mischief with his hobby, we are always disposed to let him ride on as long as he likes; but if we find that the oddity we had endured, perhaps out of a compassionate leniency and kindliness towards an individual, is to become an endemic tendency through a neighbourhood, we naturally grow uneasy. We can endure one infatuated performer on the bassoon, but if the whole street or the crescent take to it, the affair is serious. This is exactly what has happened. A few very crafty men discovered some time ago that what between the growing indifference to "party" outside the House, and the few questions which separated the two sides within it, it might be possible, by the exercise of caution and adroitness, to give a certain support to each in turn, by which, without formally breaking with their friends, they might greatly conciliate their adversaries, and thus, while very materially serving their personal interests, acquire that grand character for fairness, by which, once attained, every platitude a man utters becomes wisdom, and the dreariest trash he delivers to his constituents is listened to as the quintessence of good sense and honesty. no settled plan of personal advantage and advancement a character with the world for impartiality and scrupulous honour. These men desire "I declare to you frankly" - Oh, to be Conservatives on a sort of how I dread that frankly!"I de- limited liability. They remind me clare to you frankly, gentlemen, of the Irishman who presented that my sentiments are still as himself before his priest to get they have ever been a steady married; but, instead of the five resolve to maintain our time-hon- shillings, the appropriate fee, could oured institutions, so as to hand only produce half-a-crown. After down to our children unimpaired vainly employing all his eloquence the glorious heritage we have re- to melt the priest's heart, he sudceived from our ancestors. Though denly stopped short and said,man will ever be more ready "Well, see then, y'r rivirence, the than myself to uphold, and if need divil a sixpence more I have, so be to defend, the great constitu- marry me as far as that goes!" tion of these realms in all the in- This is exactly the way they want to tegrity of its strength, and all the be Conservatives-" a cheap bargain equipoise of its power, yet I do and a road out of it," is the sum and think "-great emphasis on the do- substance of what they aim at. May "that, balanced as parties now are, I ask what sort of constituencies situated as England is with respect like to be thus represented? There to foreign nations, charged as we is not one word of exaggeration in are with the mighty responsibilities what I have said. I appeal to the that attach to the rule of one-eighth speeches the newspapers have been of the inhabitants of the globe,-I so drearily crammed with for the say, gentlemen, I do think we can- last three months to corroborate not do better than follow the time- me. But indeed if there be people honoured statesman, who, though who listen with pleasure to the seated on an adverse bench, is the speeches, they may, by a parity of steadfast upholder and defender of absurdity, think well of the speakthe honour of England. I know Lord ers. Palmerston, gentlemen I know him well; and with whatever credit my character may lend me, I declare to you he is the steadfast and uncompromising upholder of," &c. &c. &c. Now, I don't object to these extramural bleatings at all. There are very few airs on the political fiddle, and if we are fond of the music, we must put up with the "Da Capos." I only want that the tune should be performed by the right men. Let not Archbishop M'Hall hum, "Croppies lie down," and tell me it is a Canticle. Now, Lord Palmerston is not a great artiste-but a réchauffé of him is too much for any human stomach, and yet they give us nothing else. Who is not sick of the praises we bestow on ourselves for not going to war-when war was the very last thing in our thoughts? Who is not weary of hearing how beautifully we kept out of the American conflict-the "fratricidal slaughter," as they call it? I wish any one could tell me which is Cain, and which Abel. I only know that their mother might be ashamed of them both. -- Vote with Lord Palmerston, and Who, I beg to ask, is taught welcome; only don't acquire the who is instructed -whose knowright to do so by a juggle and trick; ledge is enlarged, by these frothy don't palm yourself off on a Con- outpourings? They are very laservative constituency as a man of mentable spectacles, these "visits their party, to desert that party to our constituents." I trust ferwhen the day of trial has arrived; vently that the men who make and, above all, do not build upon a these speeches approach the hu |