takes up no space at all, and furnishes the side of a room as prettily as a bank of flowers could. I tried to convince our cousin upon this point, this embonpoint, I may say, and of course being too polite to make remarks personal to Mrs. Crowder, I playfully directed them elsewhere.

"Dear Blanche," said I, "don't you see how greatly Lady Tutbury would have to extend her premises if all the relatives of all her dancers were to be invited? She has already flung out a marquee over the leads, and actually included the cistern what can she do more! If all the girls were to have chaperons, where could the elders sit? Tutbury himself will not be present. He is a large and roomy man, like your humble servant, and Lady Tut has sent him off to Greenwich, or the Star and Garter' for the night, where, I have no doubt, he and some other stout fellows will make themselves comfortable. At a ball amongst persons of moderate means and large acquaintance in London, room is much more precious than almost anybody's company, except that of the beauties and the dancers. Look at Lord Trampleton, that enormous hulking monster, (who nevertheless dances beautifully, as all big men do,) when he takes out his favorite partner, Miss Wirledge, to polk, his arm, as he whisks her round and round, forms radii of a circle of very considerable diameter. He almost wants a room to himself. Young men and women now, when they dance, dance really; it is no lazy sauntering, as of old, but downright hard work after which they want air and refreshment. How can they get the one, when the rooms are filled with elderly folks; or the other, when we are squeezing round the supper-tables, and drinking up all the available champagne and seltzer-water? No, no; the present plan, which I hear is becoming general, is admirable for London. Let there be half a dozen of good, active, bright-eyed chaperons and duennas, little women, who are more active, and keep a better look-out than your languishing voluptuous beauties" (I said this casting at the same time a look of peculiar tenderness towards Blanche Crowder); "let them keep watch and see that all is right that the young men don't dance too often with the same girl, or disappear on to the balcony, and that sort of thing; let them have good large roomy family coaches to carry the young women home to their mammas. In a word, at a ball, let there be for the future no admittance except upon business. In all the affairs of London life, that is the rule, depend upon it."

"And pray who told you, Mr. Brown, that I didn't wish

to dance myself?" says Blanche, surveying her great person in the looking-glass (which could scarcely contain it) and flouncing out of the room; and I actually believe that the unconscionable creature, at her age and size, is still thinking that she is a fairy, and that the young fellows would like to dance round the room with her. Ah, Bob! I remember that grotesque woman a slim and graceful girl. I remember others tender and beautiful. whose bright eyes glitter, and whose sweet voices whisper no more. So they pass away-youth and beauty, love and innocence, pass away and perish. I think of one now whom I remember the fairest and the gayest, the kindest and the purest; her laughter was music — I can hear it still, though it will never echo any more. Far away the silent tomb closes over her. Other roses than those of our prime grow up and bloom, and have their day. Honest youth, generous youth, may yours be as pure and as fair!

I did not think, when I began to write it, that the last sentence would have finished so; but life is not altogether jocular, Mr. Bob, and one comes upon serious thoughts suddenly as upon a funeral in the street. Let us go back to the business we are upon, namely, balls, whereof it, perhaps, has struck you that your uncle has very little to say.

I saw one announced in the morning fashionable print today, with a fine list of some of the greatest folks in London, and had previously heard from various quarters how eager many persons were to attend it, and how splendid an entertainment it was to be. And so the morning paper announced that Mrs. Hornby Madox threw open her house in So-and-so Street, and was assisted in receiving her guests by Lady Fugleman.

Now this is a sort of entertainment and arrangement than which I confess I can conceive nothing more queer, though I believe it is by no means uncommon in English society. Mrs. Hornby Madox comes into her fortune of ten thousand a year wishes to be presented in the London world, having lived in the country previously spares no expense to make her house and festival as handsome as may be, and gets Lady Fugleman to ask the company for her not the honest Hornbys, not the family Madoxes, not the jolly old squires and friends and relatives of her family, and from her county; but the London dandies and the London society: whose names you see chronicled at every party, and who, being Lady Fugleman's friends, are invited by her ladyship to Mrs. Hornby's house.

What a strange notion of society does this give — of friend

ship, of fashion, of what people will do to be in the fashion! Poor Mrs. Hornby comes into her fortune, and says to her old friends and family, "My good people, I am going to cut every one of you. You were very well as long as we were in the country, where I might have my natural likings and affections. But henceforth I am going to let Lady Fugleman choose my friends for me. I know nothing about you any more. I have no objection to you, but if you want to know me you must ask Lady Fugleman: if she says yes, I shall be delighted; if no, Bon jour."

This strange business goes on daily in London. Honest people do it, and think not the least harm. The proudest and noblest do not think they demean themselves by crowding to Mrs. Goldcalf's parties, and strike quite openly a union between her wealth and their titles, to determine as soon as the former ceases. There is not the least hypocrisy about this at any rate the terms of the bargain are quite understood on every hand.

But oh, Bob! see what an awful thing it is to confess, and would not even hypocrisy be better than this daring cynicism, this open heartlessness Godlessness I had almost called it? Do you mean to say, you great folks, that your object in society is not love, is not friendship, is not family union and affection is not truth and kindness; is not generous_sympathy and union of Christian (pardon me the word, but I can indicate my meaning by no other) of Christian men and women, parents and children, but that you assemble and meet together, not caring or trying to care for one another, without a pretext of good-will-with a daring selfishness openly avowed? I am sure I wish Mrs. Goldcalf or the other lady no harm, and have never spoken to, or set eyes on either of them, and I do not mean to say, Mr. Robert, that you and I are a whit better than they are, and doubt whether they have made the calculation for themselves of the consequences of what they are doing. But as sure as two and two make four, a person giving up of his own accord his natural friends and relatives, for the sake of the fashion, seems to me to say, I acknowledge myself to be heartless; I turn my back on my friends, I disown my relatives, and I dishonor my father and mother.

A WORD ABOUT DINNERS.

ENGLISH Society, my beloved Bob, has this eminent advantage over all other that is, if there be any society left in the wretched distracted old European continent — that it is above all others a dinner-giving society. A people like the Germans, that dines habitually, and with what vast appetite I need not say, at one o'clock in the afternoon like the Italians, that spends its evenings in opera-boxes-like the French, that amuses itself of nights with eau sucrée and intrigue cannot, believe me, understand Society rightly. I love and admire my nation for its good sense, its manliness, its friendliness, its morality in the main and these, I take it, are all expressed in that noble institution, the dinner.

The dinner is the happy end of the Briton's day. We work harder than the other nations of the earth. We do more, we live more in our time, than Frenchmen or Germans. Every great man amongst us likes his dinner, and takes to it kindly, I could mention the most august names of poets, statesmen, philosophers, historians, judges, and divines, who are great at the dinner-table as in the field, the closet, the senate, or the bench. Gibbon mentions that he wrote the first two volumes of his history whilst a placeman in London, lodging in St. James's, going to the House of Commons, to the Club, and to dinner every day. The man flourishes under that generous and robust regimen; the healthy energies of society are kept up by it; our friendly intercourse is maintained; our intellect ripens with the good cheer, and throws off surprising crops, like the fields about Edinburgh, under the influence of that admirable liquid, Claret. The best wines are sent to this country therefore; for no other deserves them as ours does.

I am a diner-out, and live in London. I protest, as I look back at the men and dinners I have seen in the last week, my mind is filled with manly respect and pleasure. How good they have been! how admirable the entertainments! how worthy the men!

Let me, without divulging names, and with a cordial gratitude, mention a few of those whom I have met and who have all done their duty.

Sir, I have sat at table with a great, a world-renowned

statesman. I watched him during the progress of the banquet I am at liberty to say that he enjoyed it like a man.

On another day, it was a celebrated literary character. It was beautiful to see him at his dinner: cordial and generous, jovial and kindly, the great author enjoyed himself as the great statesman-may he long give us good books and good dinners!

Yet another day, and I sat opposite to a Right Reverend Bishop. My Lord, I was pleased to see good thing after good thing disappear before you; and think no man ever better became that rounded episcopal apron. How amiable he was! how kind! He put water into his wine. Let us respect the moderation of the Church.

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And then the men learned in the law: how they dine! what hospitality, what splendor, what comfort, what wine! As we walked away very gently in the moonlight, only three days since, from the 's, a friend of my youth and myself, we could hardly speak for gratitude: "Dear sir," we breathed fervently, ask us soon again." One never has too much at those perfect banquets — no hideous headaches ensue, or horrid resolutions about adopting Revalenta Arabica for the future but contentment with all the world, light slumbering, joyful waking to grapple with the morrow's work. Ah, dear Bob, those lawyers have great merits. There is a dear old judge at whose family table if I could see you seated, my desire in life would be pretty nearly fulfilled. If you make yourself agreeable there, you will be in a fair way to get on in the world. But you are a youth still. Youths go to balls: men go to dinners.

Doctors, again, notoriously eat well; when my excellent friend Sangrado takes a bumper, and saying, with a shrug and a twinkle of his eye, "Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor," tosses off the wine, I always ask the butler for a glass of that bottle.

The inferior clergy, likewise, dine very much and well. I don't know when I have been better entertained, as far as creature comforts go, than by men of very Low Church principles; and one of the very best repasts that ever I saw in my life was at Darlington, given by a Quaker.

Some of the best wine in London is given to his friends by a poet of my acquaintance. All artists are notoriously fond of dinners, and invite you, but not so profusely. Newspapereditors delight in dinners on Saturdays, and give them, thanks to the present position of Literature, very often and good. Dear Bob, I have seen the mahoganies of many men.

Every evening between seven and eight o'clock, I like to