" The nature of that
sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of
exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us. The study of lost
arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts
themselves recovered. This is an epoch of _renaissances_, and there
is ground for hope that the primitive "blush" may be dragged from its
hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the
stage.
TOMB, n. The House of Indifference. Tombs are now by common consent
invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long
tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them,
the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be
innocently "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the
soul being then all exhaled. This reasonable view is now generally
accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has
been greatly dignified.
TOPE, v. To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig.
In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping
nations are in the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted
against the hard-drinking Christians the absemious Mahometans go down
like grass before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand beef-
eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two
hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan
race.
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