the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the
blessing of food--the act of eating--should have had a particular
expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied
and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon
the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of
existence.

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in
the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out
upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting,
or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual
repasts--a grace before Milton--a grace before Shakspeare--a
devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the Fairy
Queen?--but, the received ritual having prescribed these forms to the
solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall confine my observations to
the experience which I have had of the grace, properly so called;
commending my new scheme for extension to a niche in the grand
philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now
compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug
congregation of Utopian Rabelæsian Christians, no matter where
assembled.

The form then of the benediction before eating has its beauty at
a poor man's table, or at the simple and unprovocative repasts of
children. It is here that the grace becomes exceedingly graceful.
The indigent man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the
next day or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the
blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into whose
minds the conception of wanting a dinner could never, but by some
extreme theory, have entered. The proper end of food--the animal