In answering Ezra Jennings, I accordingly repeated what I had myself heard from the lawyer's own lips-and what is already familiar to the pages. readers of these He showed plainly that he was not satisfied with my reply. With all deference to you," he said, "and with all deference to your legal adviser, Í maintain the opinion which I expressed just now. It rests, I am well aware, on a mere assumption. Pardon me for reminding you, that your opinion also rests on a mere assumption as well." The view he took of the matter was entirely new to me. I waited anxiously to hear how he would defend it. "I assume," pursued Ezra Jennings, "that the influence of the opium-after impelling you to possess yourself of the Diamond, with the purpose of securing its safety-might also impel you, acting under the same influence and the same motive, to hide it somewhere in your own room. You assume that the Hindoo conspirators could by no possibility commit a mistake. The Indians went to Mr. Luker's house after the Diamond-and, therefore, in Mr. Luker's possession the Diamond must be! Have you any evidence to prove that the Moonstone was taken to London at all? You can't even guess how, or by whom, it was removed from Lady Verinder's house! Have you any evidence that the jewel was pledged to Mr. Luker? He declares that he never heard of the Moonstone; and his banker's receipt acknowledges nothing but the deposit of a valuable of great price. The Indians assume that Mr. Luker is lying-and you assume again that the Indians are right. All I say, in defence of my view is-that it is possible. What more, Mr. Blake, either logically or legally, can be said for yours?" It was put strongly; but there was no denying that it was put truly as well. "I confess you stagger me," I replied. "Do you object to my writing to Mr. Bruff, and telling him what you have said ?" "On the contrary, I shall be glad if you will write to Mr. Bruff. If we consult his experience, we may see the matter under a new light. For the present, let us return to our experiment with the opium. We have decided that you leave off the habit of smoking, from this mo ment ?" "From this moment." "That is the first step. The next step is to reproduce, as nearly as we can, the domestic circumstances which surrounded you last year." How was this to be done? Lady Verinder was dead. Rachel and I, so long as the suspicion of theft rested on me, were parted irrevocably. Godfrey Ablewhite was away, travelling on the Continent. It was simply impossible to reassemble the people who had inhabited the house, when I had slept in it last. The statement of this objection did not appear to embarrass Ezra Jennings. He attached very little importance, he said, to reassembling the same people-seeing that it would be vain to expect them to reassume the various positions which they had occupied towards me in the past time. On the other hand, he considered it essential to the success of the experiment, that I should see the same objects about me which had surrounded me when I was last in the house. "Above all things," he said, "you must sleep in the room which you slept in, on the birthday night, and it must be furnished in the same way. The stairs, the corridors, and Miss Verinder's sitting-room, must also be restored to what they were when you saw them last. It is absolutely necessary, Mr. Blake, to replace every article of furniture in that part of the house which may now be put away. The sacrifice of your cigars will be useless, unless we can get Miss Verinder's permission to do that." "Who is to apply to her for permission ?" asked. I "Is it not possible for you to apply ?" 'Quite out of the question. After what has passed between us, on the subject of the lost Diamond, I can neither see her, nor write to her, as things are now." Ezra Jennings paused, and considered for a moment. "May I ask you a delicate question ?" he said. I signed to him to go on. "Am I right, Mr. Blake, in fancying (from one or two things which have dropped from you) that you felt no common interest in Miss Verinder, in former times ?” Quite right." "Was the feeling returned?' "It was.' 'Do دو you think Miss Verinder would be likely to feel a strong interest in the attempt to prove your innocence ?" I am certain of it." "In that case, I will write to Miss Verinderif you will give me leave." 66 Telling her of the proposal that you have made to me ?" "Telling her of everything that has passed between us to-day." It is needless to say that I eagerly accepted the service which he had offered to me. "I shall have time to write by to-day's post," he said, looking at his watch."Don't forget to lock up your cigars, when you get back to the hotel! I will call to-morrow morning and hear how you have passed the night." I rose to take leave of him; and attempted to express the grateful sense of his kindness which I really felt. He pressed my hand gently. "Remember what I told you on the moor," he answered. "If I can do you this little service, Mr. Blake, I shall feel it like a last gleam of sunshine, falling on the evening of a long and clouded day." We parted. It was then the fifteenth of June. The events of the next ten days-every one of them more or less directly connected with the experiment of which I was the passive object-are all placed on record, exactly as they happened, in the Journal habitually kept by Mr. Candy's assistant. In the pages of Ezra Jennings, nothing is concealed, and nothing is forgotten. Let Ezra Jennings tell how the venture with the opium was tried, and how it ended. QUEER-STREET. THE author of Ravenshoe informs his readers that "the good people in this world outnumber the bad ten to one," and backs his assertion with a species of tip worded thus: "The ticket for this belief is optimist.' "Ah! it is not easy to be a dweller in Queer-street and believe this! That is to say, if by "good" we mean unselfish, and by "bad" selfish. I have been established in Queer-street for more months than I care to count, and I vow and declare that Queer-street is making a pessimist of me. "Who cares?" Precisely so. Who cares? Nobody, if I don't. I occasionally entertain myself in Queer-street -having only myself to entertain-by singing the one line-only the one line; the neighbours don't object: "I'm very lonely now, Mary, for the poor make no new friends!" Make no new friends? They must be wonderfully sanguine poor who try to make new friends. Putting new friends out of the question as absurdly unmakeable, can they keep the ready-made old? An ironical Echo from the dark arches of Queer-street answers, "Can they!" I remember the days when I would not have scrupled to rehearse as my own, Mr. Henry Kingsley's articles of belief. Those were the days of house and home; of lands and goods and kindred; of health and wealth and superb laziness; those were the days of balances heavy balances; those were the days of accounts hard to be overdrawn. I was an optimist in those days. But in these? Hit me hard: I have no friends. Pish! why exert yourselves to hit me? I shall fall-I have fallenwithout a blow. I have no balance. Friends and balance are synonymous terms, ladies and gentlemen! A man I know very well, and who knows me not at all, said to me the other day-eyeing me the while, distastefully," But, hang it, I can't make you out. You have no friends!" I neglected to inquire what he meant by "it." Unless his looks belied him he meant me. But the disquisition is irrelevant. I might have replied to that man as the Dodger replied to Fagin in Oliver Twist: "I never heard you tell so much truth at a time, before." Not, you understand, that the man is in the habit of stating that which is not; but that his assertions made a profound impression on me. They were so exceptionally, and ludicrously true. No; he can't make me out. And supposing he cared to make me out (which he does not) I couldn't assist him: for I can't make myself out. And I have no friends. Of all the numbers on all the doors of all the houses in this London of ours, there is not one at which I could halt, saying to myself, "I'll turn in here and smoke a pipe with Tom, Jack, or Richard, till the shower's over." I get up in Queer-street of a morning and make preparations for my daily tramp in all weathers, from the neighbourhood of Hampstead to the neighbourhood of Westminster, and I get up with the certain knowledge that throughout that day, throughout that week, throughout an indefinite period of time, I shall not see a face or hear a voice that I care to see or hear, or whose owner cares to see or hear me. Shall I be denied the right to inform Mary, with all the melody left in my composition, that "I'm very lonely now"? Nevertheless, don't misunderstand me. I am not whining. Not in my palmiest days did I feel less inclined to quote Richard after his bad dream, and to say: I shall despair; there is no creature loves me; Stale, and flat, and common-place, all this? Yes, stale, and flat, and common-place as Queer-street. Stale, and flat, and common-place, and irksome, as the memory of days when Nay, wherefore should they? Since that I myself Queer-street was a pleasant myth, easy of study Find in myself no pity for myself! in serial literature. Stale as the daily want ofAnd I don't, because I find something too ludaily bread; flat as the water drunk undi- dicrous-grimly, but still piquantly ludicrousluted in Queer-street; common-place as the in my anomalous position, to permit of any selfscanty coat and pantaloons, the questionable commiseration. Moreover, a conviction that boots, the hat which cost threepence less than no creature loves you, and that if you die no four-and-ninepence; irksome as the incessant soul will pity you, is an excellent reason, I think effort to do your duty in, and not to scanda- (speaking religiously), for hoping and living: lise by your personal appearance, the establish- an execrable reason, I think (still speaking rement where you don't earn-how should you ?-ligiously), for despairing and dying. but where you have doled out to you, every Harry the Sixth bids thee despair and die!" Saturday, at two o'clock P.M., enough to satisfy very likely. But wilt thou despair and die, to your Queer-street landlady. oblige Harry the Sixth? More especially if If I did commit myself to the couplet, I should at least feel bound, in honour, to add with Richard: Harry happen to be the meanest cur that physical fear of physical consequences ever kept and guarded, safe and whole-skinned, within the pale of the law? I have called my position anomalous; and without being confidential overmuch, I may assert that the term applies. My position is anomalous, and I am an anomaly. The recollection how blindly, how absurdly, how childishly, passive and ignorant I was, throughout the whole deuce-begotten process which landed me in Queer-street, ought, I know, by all the rules of convention, to cause me to gnash The Romans had their jentaculum, or breakfast, soon after they rose; and this early snack consisted of bread, raisins, olives, eggs, and cheese. Their beverage at this meal was milk, or mulsum (honied wine). The prandium was a sort of lunch about noon; but the real solid repast was the cœna, our dinner, at the ninth hour, about half past two in summer. It matters little whether we call it an early supper or a late dinner, since our own seven o'clock meal is open to the same doubts. We all know the ordinary Roman house, thanks to the pretty revival at Sydenham. From the centre hall, with its little garden and cool murmuring fountain, opened the dim with its curtained doorway. The black walls bins which served for sleeping-rooms, each of the rooms, opening from the hall, and all on one floor, were painted with little groups of sea nymphs, and cupids, and triumphs of Bacchus. Italian climate was taken into consideration, The floors were mosaic. In everything the and there were no stuffy carpets or dusty mat tings to retain the dirt and heat. My teeth in darkness till returning morn, Then curse myself till sunset. But it doesn't. Quite the contrary, it causes me to laugh not " genially,' or healthily, perhaps, but still to laugh. Many matters make me laugh, nowadays. Queer-street has taught me to laugh. If the brave days of old had lasted my time, I should have gone to my place, unaware with what a powerful sense of the fudicrous I had been by Nature gifted. Nonsense? Small matters amuse small minds? Very well. Have it so. Small matters We will suppose the ninth hour near at hand, amuse my small mind mightily, especially in and the slaves busy in the kitchen preparing these holiday-tides. "Were you at the Derby p" to dish up dinner. The busts of the ances "What are you going to do, Monday and Tues-tors in the hall have been dusted and rubbed, day ?" "Where do you dine to-day ?" I never and the couches are ready ranged in the trisaw the humour of these small enquiries, until I clinium (or dining-room). The gold and silver came to Queer-street! There is a man whose cups are ranged on the buffets, and all is ready open door I daily pass when I turn out into the for the feast, even down, to the garlands of streets at what we call in our office, and very close of the banquet. roses which are to be given to the guests at the facetiously call as far as I am concerned, "The luncheon hour," and this man, as I pass his door, invariably and heartily salutes me with: "May good digestion wait on appetite!" Ho! ho! He thinks I am going to lunch! What an overpowering joke-in Queer-street! The couches were so arranged that they formed three sides of a square, and in the midst stood the cedar and ivory, or tortoiseshell and bronze, tables, on which each course was placed, arranged in trays. The guests lay down on the couches in an uncomfortable Oriental way, three to a couch: each guest, propped up with cushions, leaning on his left LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE. arm, the right being free to receive food and DINING WITH AN ANCIENT ROMAN. Ir any people ever knew how to cook, and by cooking to elevate the necessity of eating into the refined luxury of dining, it was the Romans under the early emperors. They had then acquired all the poetical and culinary art of Greece, and united it to the more solid learning of Rome. Those Romans were good livers, huge eaters, and great spendthrifts. Vitellius never squandered less than ten thousand crowns at a meal, and at one celebrated dinner had on table two thousand fishes and seven thousand fat birds. As for that monster of extravagance, Heliogabalus, (Gobbleus it ought to be), at one special party he gave each guest the gold cup from which he had drunk, and sent each person home in a carriage presented to him for the purpose. Albanus, a Gaulish consul, is said to have devoured at one supper, one hundred peaches, ten melons, fifty large green figs, and three hundred oysters. There is a rumour too that the tyrant Maximus used to eat forty pounds of meat per day. to hold his plate. Silk cushions marked the place of each guest. The host pointed out the special seats to favoured guests, much as your host does now. As soon as the guests had taken their places, slaves came and removed their sandals, and boys with their loins girded up offered water in bowls: in which it was the custom for all to dip their hands. At a nod of the host, the first course would appear-generally shell-fish, eggs, and vegetables-and with it a bill of fare to guide the appetite of each diner. Every rich man had his own slave at his back, to hand the dishes or to pass the wine. We can, by help of a learned German professor (a distinguished friend of Dreikopf's), and Petronius, pretty correctly follow a preliminary "gustatorium," which more resembled the conclusion than the beginning of an English dinner. Let us place in the centre of the first tray, which was inlaid with tortoiseshell, a bronze ass, in whose silver panuiers were piled black and green olives. On the back of this ass rode a portly bronze Silenus, from whose hands ran down a sauce of oysters and fish-livers upon a sow's with aloes, myrrh, aromatic bitters, and costly breast that floated in the dish below. There essential oils. They drank hot spiced wine were also sausages on silver gridirons: the hot in winter, and they had bronze urns (of a coals beneath, simulated by crimson pomegranate tureen shape with a tap), in which it was somepips and Syrian plums; and there was lacertus (a times served. It was not uncommon to serve common fish) served up with chopped eggs, mint, the wine in a sort of huge punch-bowl, out and rue. Snails and oysters were also handed of which it was ladled into the cups of the round, garnished with asparagus, lettuces, and guests, either neat, or mixed with "allaying radish. The guests were all this time con- Tiber." stantly supplied with goblets of white wine and honey (a sort of Athol brose). In fact, this opening of the Roman banquet did not differ very much from the opening of a modern Russian dinner, which commences with sardines, anchovies, and a small glass of brandy or liqueur. The second course would probably be a surprise-one of those elaborate practical jokes in which the Roman epicure delighted-perhaps a whole pig stuffed with fat thrushes, the yolks of eggs and mincemeat. But we will follow Petronius at his banquet. A wooden hen with outspread wings, exquisitely carved, was there brought in in a basket full of chaff, brooding on eggs which the slaves drew out and handed to the guests. These eggs were found, to everybody's delight, to be of baked crust, each one enclosing a highly-seasoned beccafico. The signal to remove this gustatorium (or course) was given by musicians placed at one end of the atrium. An ingenious surprise of this kind was once tried on Nicomedes, King of Bithynia. The monarch was passionately fond of fresh herrings; and, being far from the sea-coast, in a wild region where a wagonfull of gold would not have purchased a fresh fish, the king's ingenious cook contrived to enclose meat in frames of the shape of the fish, and to season it so as to exactly resemble herring. At Petronius's supper, too, the cook served up geese and wild fowl, moulded out of pork. But all these surprises, so artfully designed to reawaken the blunted appetite, were poor, compared with the clever thought of the French cook who took some live crawfish and painted their shells with some sharp acid that turned them a brilliant scarlet. He then covered these pressed men under a pile of patient dead recruits in the same uniform, and, clapping a tight cover over them all, hurried the dish on to the royal table, where the astonishment and horror of the ladies at the coming to life of the supposed dead creatures caused infinite amusement, and small talk. On the removal of the second ingenious course, we may suppose black slaves wiping the tables and handing water again to the guests, whose hands would by this time require ablution. Boys wearing green garlands would then enter, carrying between them on sticks those large oval amphorae that could not stand alone, but were kept embedded in earth or sand. On the labels round the gypsumed necks, were written the names of the consuls in whose period of office the wine had been bottled. The Romans had a detestable plan of putting sea-water into wine, and also of doctoring it The Greek and Roman wine-merchants (as remarkable for honesty as their English descendants) had the following traditions about wine. There were two kinds of Falernian, the dry and the sweet; neither of which improved after twenty years probation in the cask. The Alban wine was ripe at fifteen years, the Surrentine at five-and-twenty. The Trifoline was an early wine; the Tibur, ripe after ten years imprisonment. The Gauran was a scarce and fine wine, strong and oily. The Cæcuban was a grand wine, but heady. The Signine wine was ripe at six years; the Nomentan at five. The Erbulian wine, at first dark, afterwards turned white, and was a light and delicate wine. Marseilles wine was fine, but thick and full bodied. The Tarentine were light sweet wines. Corinthian and Eubean wines were harsh and bad. Snow was in the summer mixed with the wine to cool it, and to the consequent dilution the Romans seem to have been indifferent. In the next course let us suppose that strange dish, the very refinement of luxury, which was served to Ulpian: "The Dish of Roses," which feasted the eyes, nose, and stomach, and at the same time appealed strongly to the imagination. It was thus made, and we confide it as a secret to the French cooks of the United Kingdom: Take a wheel-barrow full of rose leaves, and pound in a mortar; add to them the brains of two pigs, and a dozen thrushes, boiled and mixed with chopped yolk of egg, oil, vinegar, pepper and wine; mix and pour these ingredients together, then stew them slowly and steadily, until the perfect perfume is developed -we say stew, but it may be boil, for the obscure Greek writer from whence we quote, disdained to enter into minute practical details. In the third course let us suppose another surprise. A tray is brought in, covered with natural turf on which are spread pieces of honeycomb, and heaps of parched chick peas. When the guests have been startled and horrified enough at this, the slaves lift off a tray and disclose a rich and lavish dinner in full bloom beneath. In the midst of the tray we can place the stew of roses, or a fat hare fitted with artificial wings and called a Pegasus, by the master cook. We surround this, with dishes of pigeons, fowls, ducks, mullets, turbots, and flounders. The guests applaud the display as the carver advances trippingly and carves in strict accordance with time and rhythm. The next of the twenty courses not unfrequent at the table of a Roman epicure, would perhaps be a boar roasted whole (the Umbrian boars were preferred for their special flavour) by throw of dice, after the rose and ivy wreaths with palm twig baskets full of Syrian or Egyptian and perfumes and ointments had been distridates hung from its tusks. Around this savoury buted. He who threw Venus, or the six, became monster were sometimes placed litters of suck- king. The lowest cast was called the dog. It ing pigs moulded in sweet paste. These were was usual, as each one threw, for him to invoke distributed as presents among the company. the name of the woman he loved. The leader of The scissor or carver sometimes came in dressed the feast decided what quantity of water should as a hunter, to operate on the wild boar, if be mixed with the wine, as only avowed it were served as the pièce de resistance. drunkards took pure wine. This chairman also fixed what number of cyathi, or ladlesful, each person should have poured into his glass at a time. When a guest proposed a toast, he mentioned the name of his love and his companions, and himself then drank as many ladlesful of negus as there were letters in the lady's name. After this, as a surprise in the nature of a pleasant practical joke, would be borne in, say a pig stuffed with live thrushes that flew out when the cook opened their prison with his knife. Men like Apicius, of insane appetites, would construct new dishes of singing birds, or of the brains of ostriches and nightingales; but these were exceptional cases, to be matched only by the crazy prodigality of tyrannical voluptuaries like Heliogabalus, who would strew his floors with gold dust-ordinary people strewing their mosaic pavements merely with saffron, and coloured and perfumed sawdust. It was not uncommon at the close of a Roman dinner, for the ceiling to open and presents to descend, fastened to a silver hoop. In this way silver and alabaster bottles of ointment, and silver garlands, were often given to the guests. When the dessert appeared, mastick toothpicks were handed round by the slaves. In the dessert tray a statue often occupied the centre, a Flora or Vertumnus, laden with fruits, sometimes artificial and full of saffron-coloured juices, that spirted forth on those who first pressed them. Among the sweetmeats made by the Romans, were fish and birds moulded in pastry and filled with almonds and raisins; they were also fond of melons cut into shapes, and of quinces stuck with almonds. When rich people gave an entertainment and wished to make up by displays of wealth for witty and amusing conversation, it was usual to have rope dancers and posture makers to exhibit between the courses: while more refined people would send for flute players or would have Spanish dancing girls from Cadiz to perform their semi-Oriental dances. If the host wished to turn the Cœna into a revel, the party would then take baths or saunter along the colonnades, while a new room was fitted up for them. Roman furniture was more portable than ours, and the change would give the numerous slaves of a rich man but very little trouble. We must imagine the new room panelled with marble, the ceiling inlaid with gold and ivory; the chairs, tables, and couches, in the pure Greek taste, simple, and severely beautiful in shape. The lamps would be like the Pompeian lamps, hung by bronze and silver chains from the ceiling, or suspended from the cross boughs of bronze pillars. Greek taste had shaped every cup and moulded even the simplest ornaments of the table. The goblets of all shapes were ranged on silver or marble sideboards. The slaves prepared the vessels full of snow, and the urns for the mulled wine. The chairman or king of the feast was then chosen But after all, it must be allowed that there is some justice in Smollett's extraordinarily humorous caricature (so much in the style of Gilray) of a dinner after the manner of the ancients. The Romans were in some respects barbaric in their tastes. They craved for unnatural things rather than real dainties. We certainly should prefer salmon à la Béchamel to thunny seasoned with (ugh!) asafoetida and cheese. They perfumed their wines, which must have destroyed all refinement of bouquet; they mingled their courses in a savage manner, and without respect to the convenances or to common sense; they were fond of vulgar tricks and theatrical surprises, which must have irritated the temper and vexed the digestion; they neglected soups. They were ignorant of liqueurs, and did not know the glory of a chasse, or the propriety of a gloria." They fretted that poor weak vessel the stomach with rasping music and pompous trumpetings, and interrupted the serious attention requisite for the pure enjoyment of an exquisite dish, by the unwise introduction of ballet girls and acrobats. And above all-and here we hold them guilty of the highest treason-they, as a rule, excluded ladies from their banquets. No won der that leering Debauchery, crimson-faced Drunkenness, and other of Circe's chosen servants, forced their way in at the barred Roman door, and that where the chaste Venus was forbidden, Cotytto and her train were welcomed. THE BARRACK-ROOM COMPANY. PERMIT a veritable soldier to look round the barrack-room in which he sits, and to describe its other occupants with fidelity. · Old Soldier is a brave man who has won the Victoria cross, the Crimean, Turkish, Indian, and China medals; yet the medal for "long service and good conduct" he will never win. He has one fault-running through the pages of the defaulters' book and the courts-martial records-habitual drunkenness. He is a good soldier in all else; and after years of toil and trouble he is still tough and hard as the stock of his own rifle, methodically punctilious as to his bed and accoutrements, mindful of the amenities of the barrack-room. He has a store of anecdote, and tells with unassuming force |