In Hone's Table Book I find the bill of a
mayor's feast in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
Certainly he was the Mayor of Norwich; but he
entertained the Queen and all her court:

Total charge for the feast ...  Â£1   12    9

Three of the items will be sufficient to show
how the banquet cost so little:

Eight stone of beef at 8d.
per stone, and a sirloin ...      Â£0    5    8
A hind-quarter of veal  ....        0    0  10
Bushel of flour ................        0    0    6
Two gallons of white wine
and canary ......................       0    2    0

Going up-stairs, we find the Lord Mayor still
occupied in his business parlour. Applicants
are still besieging his door. Another cart-load
of letters has been shot upon his table. One
appeals to him as the most benevolent gentleman
on the face of the earth; another declares
that he is a villain of the deepest dye, and is
not fit to live upon the face of the earth. Meantime,
I find that he has presided at the Court of
Aldermen; and an intimation has just come in,
that it will be his duty to preside to-morrow at
the Court of Common Council. He has scarcely
got through all his business when it is time to
dress for dinner.

This evening he entertains—and it is part of
his duty, observe—the Ward of Farringdon
Within; to-morrow it will be his duty to
entertain the Ward of Farringdon Without; and
in the course of his year of office, it will be
his duty to feast the City companies, the
corporation, her Majesty's ministers, the judges, the
bishops, and many other public bodies. At each
of these banquets he has to make about a dozen
speeches in proposing toasts, which is no light
work of itself.

A worthy woman in the crowd, on Lord
Mayor's Day, was heard to exclaim, "Ah, I wonder
how the ex-Lady Mayoress feels this morning!"
Which plainly expresses the popular idea
that it is a fine thing to be Lady Mayoress.
So it is, perhaps; but I should say, that on the
day when her husband goes out of office, the
Lady Mayoress feels very much relieved.

So, my young Whittington, turn by all manner
of means if you have the courage; and if
you do turn and become Lord Mayor of London,
all I can say is—that the citizens ought to be
very much obliged to you.

MIGHT AND MAGNITUDE.

MR. DU CHAILLU has announced his
discovery of a whole nation of negro dwarfs. He
has given us measurements of their stature,
male and female. It is a pity he did not measure
their strength. For want of a better
dynamometer, he might have pitted a man against a
camel, or a woman against a cow. Should his
notes contain no information on this point, he
will have to return to Africa to seek it.

For, little by little the belief is gaining ground
that fat is not force, nor size strength, nor
plethora power. If we are to trust the most
modern deductions of science, Goliath ought to
have been a monster of weakness, while Samson,
whose feats proclaim his prowess, can hardly
have reached the middle height. Hercules, too,
must have been quite a small man. "Long and
lazy, little and loud," are proverbial expressions
physically accounted for. The Pygmæi of
Thrace, who went to war with the cranes, were
indeed a valiant race, if only three inches high.

To show how things may be so, and that
strength and smallness are compatible, we will
begin, not quite at the beginning of all, but with
a few elementary considerations suggested by
the perusal of M. Henri de Parville's scientific
romance, "Un Habitant de la Planète Mars,"
to which learned jeu d'esprit we do no more
than allude on the present occasion.

The bodily frame of any animal is as much a
machine as a steam-engine is a machine. Now
the more carbon a machine consumes, the more
force it is capable of producing.

We must be carefui to avoid forgetting that,
in strict fact, at the present epoch, not a single
thing in nature is either created or annihilated.
It is transformed, and that is all. Thus, you
may burn a piece of paper, but you do not
destroy it. You simply make it suffer a
metamorphosis. If such be your desire, you can
find it again, and collect its substance, weight
for weight. Instead of retaining its primitive
shape, the greater portion has passed into a
gaseous state. It has become partly gas, which
mingles with the atmosphere, and partly ashes,
which fall to the ground.

Force, M. de Parville elsewhere reminds
us, undergoes similar transformations. We do
not generate our own strength, as we are apt,
in our pride, to fancy we do. We receive it
ready generated, and then we transform it or
displace it. Charcoal, for instance, in obedience
to our will, supplies us with heat, that is, with
force.*  Do you think that it really creates
that force? Indeed it does not. It derived it
from the sun. And when, in the depth of winter,
a bright sea-coal fire is blazing in the grate,
all the light and heat it gives is bestowed at
the expense of the solar heat.

*  See HEAT AND WORK, vol. xiv., p. 29.

In truth, every vegetable substance has been
actually built up, bit by bit, organ by organ,
by rays of light and heat from the sun. The
materials so grouped, remain together; but only
on one condition, namely, that the solar force,
which originally assembled them, shall not quit
them.

To keep convicts in prison, you must have
jailers and turnkeys, who will find quite enough
work to occupy their leisure. But by setting
your prisoners free, the staff of men, whose
services are no longer required, can be employed
upon some other task or duty. Exactly so in
tne present case. By burning the vegetable,
you destroy the quiescent state of its particles;
you disturb their equilibrium; you give them
the opportunity of breaking loose. The force
which held them together in subjection is
discharged from its functions, and employs its
activity in other ways. For you, it becomes