justly powerful journal, I am somewhat surprised that the subject of Dining out' has not yet found a place. This cannot be from the narrow circle of its influence, or from its not comprehending your individual self within it on numerous occasions, but you perhaps regard it as one of the many irremediable nuisances of society which irritate only for the time, ending always in thankfulness that its endurance is transitory, and neither compulsory nor indispensable.

"Dining out,' nevertheless, or, more correctly, the rules which now govern what is called a dinner party,' bids fair to extinguish all agreeable intercourse between friends and families. The dominion of servants, and the weakness and ignorance of masters and mistresses who submit to what they suppose servants are better informed about than they, absolutely turn into a punishment what is meant to be an enjoyment. That some conventionalities, such as the order of partaking dishes, the mode of using implements, &c., are requisite, perhaps advantageous, I freely admit; but that a guest should starve because a liveried lout has not time or inclination to present a dish to him from which he could much more easily and agreeably help himself-that a lady should parch in the midst of luxurious beverages because she feels that her draughts are dependent on the good will and alacrity of the lackey who is counting them or that she should be compelled to take whatever viand is offered to her, however distasteful, in the fear of finding it impos

sible afterwards to eat except after dinner-these are monstrosities which are as insufferable as they are unnecessary. But they are by no means the greatest or most frequent miseries of a modern dinner-table. These same louts and lackeys make a clatter of dishes, plates, and decanters that renders general conversation impracticable; and if you have the good fortune to be able to enter into one with the lady immediately next to you, it is interrupted by a greasy paw in a spruce white cotton glove jogging your shoulder with a dish of unknown and unnameable contents, of which you could not partake if you wished without bestowing an unwelcome portion on the dress of your neighbour, or the carpet of your hostess. This abomination of dependence on servants for food now extends also to drink; a glass of wine is unattainable except through the hot-gloved paws, and at the cost of the creaking shoes of the real rulers of the feast, and it is not to be had at all but at their good pleasure; and all this simply because the master and mistress surrender their judgment to what they think fashion! It is deemed rustic, it seems, to suppose that your guests are so unfashionable as not to be perfectly and entirely at their ease without your 'vouching' it; and it is gauche for guests to eat, drink, talk, move, or sit still except as arranged in some imaginary code framed for the arrogant assumption of importance by the meanest class of mankind.

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Now, Sir, I hold it as a moral certainty that no lady or gentleman in the three kingdoms, moving in the society accustomed to dine out,' will deny the existence of the evils pointed out in this letter. I do therefore anxiously hope that by publishing it, or in your own more efficient way noticing its subject, you will tell the givers of dinners that it is to them, and not to their servants, that guests must look for entertainment and enjoyment; that whatever fashion may dictate, human nature requires attention, personal invitation, inducement, empressement, in the giver of a feast towards his convives. You will save many a fidgety old gentleman like myself from the pain of giving my hostess a hint (which I saw was offensive), that there was no wine on the table, by asking her to do me the honour of taking a glass with me (which we did not get for nearly a quarter of an hour), and you will put an end to starvation in the midst of profusion, irritation and disappointment in the midst of elegance; and substitute good sense and agreeable conversation for noise, bustle, and inanity.

"I am, Sir, your very obedient servant,

"Westminster, July 1, 1844."

"IMPRANSUS."

CHAPTER II.

MANNERS.

"Do I not know the time's condition ?"-Ben Jonson.

IT was not until the close of the sixteenth century that the fashion of migrating to London began. One of the earliest notices of the fast advancing custom is gleaned from Lodge:

"The gentlemen of Norff. and Suffolk were comaunded to depte from London before Xtemmas, and to repaire to theire countries, and there to kepe hospitalitie amongest their neighbors.'

Perhaps to no movement has Fashion been so indebted as to this, for the influence she has obtained over manners generally. Theretofore each nobleman or gentleman was lord-paramount in his own halls; and whilst he exercised generous and general hospitality within them, his guests and connexions were well disposed to regard all he did as "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," without reference to what others did or did not do. But a change which was to influence the whole island accrued gradually, and, as it at first appeared, from a very inadequate * Lodge's Illustrations, ii. 383.

cause. Business, or accident, or a suit to be pressed at court, led an individual to London; and of course, when there, he took care not to return without seeing "the bravery of the court; and on his return he raised the admiration and envy of his country neighbours by his travelled graces, his court airs, his abundant swaggering, and immense self-importance. Human nature could not stand his assumption of superiority, more especially when to this was added the effect which the new fashioned hoods and tippets of his wife and daughters (my readers will recollect that there was no railroad for the conveyance of Fashions then) had on the nerves of the ladies heretofore imprisoned in the country. The natural result was, that the little quantum of philosophy which remained to the lords of creation, under these exciting circumstances, yielded inevitably to the torrent of eloquence with which they were assailed by the fair sex; and so

.

"With a new fashion, when Christmas is drawing on,

On a new journey to London straight must all be gone."

The custom was most exciting, and rapidly spread,―so rapidly that Elizabeth enacted sundry ordinances against it, requiring persons to stay on their own estates, and forbidding them to flock to London. She might as well have legislated to the winds-for FASHION was against her.

The evil-for an evil it soon became-reached