almost as sublime as his shadow--almost as overwhelming as his person.
Conceive the Man-Mountain playing the amiable with such a delicate young
creature like Julia. Conceive him falling on his knees before
her--pressing her delicate hand, and "popping the question," while his
large round eyes shed tears of affection and suspense, and his huge sides
shook with emotion! Conceive him enduring all the pangs of love-sickness,
never telling his love; "concealment, like a worm in the bud, preying upon
his damask cheek," while his hard-hearted mistress stood disdainfully by,
"like pity on a monument, _smiling_ at grief." Above all, conceive him
taking the lover's leap--say from Dunnet or Duncansby-head, where the
rocks tower four hundred feet above the Pentland Firth, and floundering in
the waters like an enormous whale; the herring shoals hurrying away from
his unwieldy gambols, as from the presence of the real sea-born leviathan.
Cacus in love was not more grand, or the gigantic Polyphemus, sighing at
the feet of Galatea, or infernal Pluto looking amiable beside his ravished
queen. Have you seen an elephant in love? If you have, you may conceive
what Mr. Tims would be in that interesting situation.

Supper was brought in. It consisted of eggs, cold veal, bacon-ham, and a
Welsh rabbit. I must confess, that, perplexed as I was by all the previous
events of the evening, I felt a gratification at the present moment, in
the anxiety to see how the Man-Mountain would comport himself at table. I
had beheld his person and his shadow with equal admiration, and I doubted
not that his powers of eating were on the same great scale as his other
qualifications. They were, indeed. Zounds, how he did eat! Cold veal,
eggs, bacon-ham, and Welsh rabbit, disappeared "like the baseless fabric
of a vision, and left not a wreck behind;" so thoroughly had nine-tenths
of them taken up their abode in the _bread basket_ (vide Jon Bee) of the
Man-Mountain; the remaining tenth sufficed for the rest of the company,
viz. Julia, her aunt, her aunt's husband, and myself.