III
its broken meats outface Christ's thrifty miracle. But tho' of its mere sensual smirch the scene be cleansed60at fashionable tables, where delicat guestssit and play with their food inattentively, as 'twerin their relaxation an accidental relishto the intellectual banter and familiar discourseof social entertainment—a thing overlook'damong the agreeable superfluities of life,trifles good in themselves, and no more censurablethan the fine linen of Ulysses and the broochthat Penelope gave him, nor the rangled shroudthat she wove for his sire, nor any work of price70that humbly doeth honor unto any temple of God—yet this amenity of Mammon is to the epicuremere disgust, a farrago of incongruous kickshaws,a hazardous pampering, as barbarously remote from pleasure's goal as pothouse cheese and ale.For Reason once engaged on the æsthetic of foodrefineth every means, as those painters in oilwho all their sunless days sat labouring to attaina chiaroscuro of full colour—so the epicure;nor planneth he his creation with a less regard80to grandiose composition, in a scheme of morselsgradated to provoke and stimulate alike
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