up, toss off his glass, get confidence, and begin to talk right and left. He wanted but the spur to set him going. It is supplied by the butler at the back of his chair.

It sometimes happens, again, that a host's conversational powers are not brilliant. I own that I could point out a few such whom I have the honor to name among my friends - -gentlemen, in fact, who wisely hold their tongues because they have nothing to say which is worth the hearing or the telling, and properly confine themselves to the carving of the mutton and the ordering of the wines. Such men, manifestly, should always be allowed, nay encouraged, to ask their guests to take wine. In putting that question, they show their good-will, and cannot possibly betray their mental deficiency. For example, let us suppose Jones, who has been perfectly silent all dinnertime, oppressed, doubtless, by that awful Lady Tiara, who sits swelling on his right hand, suddenly rallies, singles me out, and with a loud cheering voice cries," Brown my boy, a glass of wine." I reply, "With pleasure, my dear Jones." He responds as quick as thought, Shall it be hock or champagne, Brown?" I mention the wine which I prefer. He calls to the butler, and says, "Some champagne or hock" (as the case may be, for I don't choose to commit myself), some champagne or hock to Mr. Brown;" and finally he says, "Good health!" in a pleasant tone. Thus you see, Jones, though not a conversationist, has had the opportunity of making no less than four observations, which, if not brilliant or witty, are yet manly, sensible, and agreeable. And I defy any man in the metropolis, be he the most accomplished, the most learned, the wisest, or the most eloquent, to say more than Jones upon a similar occasion.

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If you have had a difference with a man, and are desirous to make it up, how pleasant it is to take wine with him. Nothing is said but that simple phrase which has just been uttered by my friend Jones; and yet it means a great deal. The cup is a symbol of reconciliation. The other party drinks up your good-will as you accept his token of returning friendship — and thus the liquor is hallowed which Jones has paid for: and I like to think that the grape which grew by Rhine or Rhone was born and ripened under the sun there, so as to be the means of bringing two good fellows together. I once heard the head physician of a Hydropathic establishment on the sunny banks of the first-named river, give the health of His Majesty the King of Prussia, and, calling upon the company to receive that august toast with a "donnerndes Lebehoch," toss off a bumper

of sparkling water. It did not seem to me a genuine enthusiasm. No, no, let us have toast and wine, not toast and water. It was not in vain that grapes grew on the hills of Father Rhine.

One seldom asks ladies now to take wine, except when, in a confidential whisper to the charming creature whom you have brought down to dinner, you humbly ask permission to pledge her, and she delicately touches her glass, with a fascinating smile, in reply to your glance, a smile, you rogue,

which goes to your heart. I say, one does not ask ladies any more to take wine: and I think, this custom being abolished, the contrary practice should be introduced, and that the ladies should ask the gentlemen. I know one who did, une grande dame de par le monde, as honest Brantome phrases it, and from whom I deserved no such kindness; but, sir, the effect of that graceful act of hospitality was such, that she made a grateful slave for ever of one who was an admiring rebel previously, who would do anything to show his gratitude, and who now knows no greater delight than when he receives a card which bears her respected name.*

A dinner of men is well now and again, but few well-regulated minds relish a dinner without women. There are some wretches who, I believe, still meet together for the sake of what is called "the spread," who dine each other round and round, and have horrid delights in turtle, early pease, and other culinary luxuries —— but I pity the condition as I avoid the banquets of those men. The only substitute for ladies at dinners, or consolation for want of them, is-smoking. Cigars, introduced with the coffee, do, if anything can, make us forget the absence of the other sex. But what a substitute is that for her who doubles our joys, and divides our griefs! for woman! as my friend the Traveller said.

GREAT AND LITTLE DINNERS.

IT has been said, dear Bob, that I have seen the mahoganies of many men, and it is with no small feeling of pride and gratitude that I am enabled to declare also, that I hardly remember in my life to have had a bad dinner. Would to heaven that all mortal men could say likewise! Indeed, and in the presence of

*Upon my word, Mr. BROWN, this is too broad a hint. — Punch.

so much want and misery as pass under our ken daily, it is with a feeling of something like shame and humiliation that I make the avowal; but I have robbed no man of his meal that I know of, and am here speaking of very humble as well as very grand banquets, the which I maintain are, when there is a sufficiency, almost always good.

Yes, all dinners are good, from a shilling upwards. The plate of boiled beef which Mary, the neat-handed waitress, brings or used to bring you in the Old Bailey-I say used, for, ah me! I speak of years long past, when the cheeks of Mary were as blooming as the carrots which she brought up with the beef, and she may be a grandmother by this time, or a pallid ghost, far out of the regions of beef; - from the shilling dinner of beef and carrots to the grandest banquet of the season everything is good. There are no degrees in eating. I mean that mutton is as good as venison beefsteak, if you are hungry, as good as turtle bottled ale, if you like it, to the full as good as champagne; there is no delicacy in the world which Monsieur Francatelli or Monsieur Soyer can produce, which I believe to be better than toasted cheese. I have seen a dozen of epicures at a grand table forsake every French and Italian delicacy for boiled leg of pork and pease-pudding. You can but be hungry, and eat and be happy.

What is the moral I would deduce from this truth, if truth it be? I would have a great deal more hospitality practised than is common among us - more hospitality and less show. Properly considered, the quality of dinner is twice blest; it blesses him that gives, and him that takes: a dinner with friendliness is the best of all friendly meetings — a pompous entertainment where no love is, the least satisfactory.

Why, then, do we of the middle classes persist in giving entertainments so costly, and beyond our means? This will be read by many mortals, who are aware that they live on leg of mutton themselves, or worse than this, have what are called meat teas, than which I cannot conceive a more odious custom; that ordinarily they are very sober in their way of life; that they like in reality that leg of mutton better than the condiments of that doubtful French artist who comes from the pastrycook's, and presides over the mysterious stewpans in the kitchen ; why, then, on their company dinners, should they flare up in the magnificent manner in which they universally do?

Everybody has the same dinner in London, and the same soup, saddle of mutton, boiled fowls and tongue, entrées, champagne, and so forth. I own myself to being no better nor

worse than my neighbors in this respect, and rush off to the confectioners' for sweets, &c.; hire sham butlers and attendants; have a fellow going round the table with still and dry champagne, as if I knew his name, and it was my custom to drink those wines every day of my life. I am as bad as my neighbors: but why are we so bad, I ask?- why are we not more reasonable?

If we receive very great men or ladies at our houses, I will lay a wager that they will select mutton and gooseberry tart for their dinner: forsaking the entrées which the men in white Berlin gloves are handing round in the Birmingham plated dishes. Asking lords and ladies, who have great establishments of their own, to French dinners and delicacies, is like inviting a grocer to a meal of figs, or a pastry-cook to a banquet of raspberry tarts. They have had enough of them. And great folks, if they like you, take no count of your feasts, and grand preparations, and can but eat mutton like men.

One cannot have sumptuary laws now-a-days, or restrict the gastronomical more than any other trade: but I wish a check could be put upon our dinner extravagances by some means, and am confident that the pleasures of life would greatly be increased by moderation. A man might give two dinners for one, according to the present pattern. Half your money is swallowed up in a dessert, which nobody wants in the least, and which I always grudge to see arriving at the end of plenty. Services of culinary kickshaws swallow up money, and give nobody pleasure, except the pastry-cook, whom they enrich. Everybody entertains as if he had three or four thousand a year.

Some one with a voice potential should cry out against this overwhelming luxury. What is mere decency in a very wealthy man is absurdity — nay, wickedness in a poor one: a frog by nature, I am an insane, silly creature, to attempt to swell myself to the size of the ox, my neighbor. Oh, that I could establish in the middle classes of London an Anti-entrée and Anti-Dessert movement! I would go down to posterity not illdeserving of my country in such a case, and might be ranked among the social benefactors. Let us have a meeting at Willis's Rooms, Ladies and Gentlemen, for the purpose, and get a few philanthropists, philosophers, and bishops, or so, to speak! As people, in former days, refused to take sugar, let us get up a society which shall decline to eat dessert and made dishes.*

Mr Brown here enumerates three entrées, which he confesses he cannot resist, and likewise preserved cherries at dessert: but the principle is good, though the man is wosk

In this way, I say, every man who now gives a dinner might give two; and take in a host of poor friends and relatives, who are now excluded from his hospitality. For dinners are given mostly in the middle classes by way of revenge; and Mr. and Mrs. Thompson ask Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, because the latter have asked them. A man at this rate who gives four dinners of twenty persons in the course of the season, each dinner costing him something very near upon thirty pounds, receives in return, we will say, forty dinners from the friends whom he has himself invited. That is, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson pay a hundred and twenty pounds, as do all their friends, for forty-four dinners of which they partake. So that they may calculate that every time they dine with their respective friends, they pay about twenty-eight shillings per tête. What a sum this is. dear Johnson, for you and me to spend upon our waistcoats! What does poor Mrs. Johnson care for all these garish splendors, who has had her dinner at two with her dear children in the nursery? Our custom is not hospitality or pleasure, but to be able to cut off a certain number of acquaintance from the dining list.

One of these dinners of twenty, again, is scarcely ever pleasant as far as regards society. You may chance to get near a pleasant neighbor and neighboress, when your corner of the table is possibly comfortable. But there can be no general conversation. Twenty people cannot engage together in talk. You would want a speaking-trumpet to communicate from your place by the lady of the house (for I wish to give my respected reader the place of honor) to the lady at the opposite corner at the right of the host. If you have a joke or a mot to make, you cannot utter it before such a crowd. A joke is nothing which can only get a laugh out of a third part of the company. The most eminent wags of my acquaintance are dumb in these great parties; and your raconteur or story-teller, if he is prudent, will invariably hold his tongue. For what can be more odious than to be compelled to tell a story at the top of your voice, to be called on to repeat it for the benefit of a distant person who has only heard a part of the anecdote? There are stories of mine which would fail utterly, were they narrated in any but an undertone; others in which I laugh, am overcome by emotion, and so forth what I call my intimes stories. Now it is impossible to do justice to these except in the midst of a general hush, and in a small circle; so that I am commonly silent. And as no anecdote is positively new in a party of twenty, the chances are so much against you that somebody should have heard the story before, in which case you are done.