is the savage state and assumption of the thing
—these twenty-two haughty lords of creation
being waited on so obsequiously in the Eastern
manner by slaves. I even accept, as a gratifying
tribute to my sovereignty, that gentle propulsion
of the soft leathern chair (padded at the
back, mark you, and gliding on castors) by an
unseen bondman as I take my seat. I am commander
of the faithful, and temporary satrap. I
luxuriate and grow wanton on my dignity, and
feel tempted to clap my hands when I want my
slaves to appear.

But commend me, 'fore all the shapes which
this delectable form of entertainment may
take, to the more contracted area and selecter
few, to the snowy circus which spreads
out within the plaisaunce of the Round Table.
Within that witches' ring lies true dining felicity.
The party of three, of four, or stretch it
even to five— free tongues, youth— yes, above all,
youth— no superfluity or overloading of viands,
— these are the fitting elements. When young
Wenham Lake Smith asks me home in a " domestic
humdrum way— the old thing, you know"—
as he puts it, I am glad; for I do know what
" the old thing" means. If I happen to be bound
hand and foot to a barbaric feast of the heroes,
I contrive to be taken ill suddenly—only, however,
in relation to the barbaric feast. I know
that Wenham Lake Smith and Mrs. Wenham
Lake Smith keep the daintiest little ménage in
the world, that their mutual relations have not
as yet suffered by that sad conjugal wear and
tear, that the bloom is still on the nuptial rye,
that they are not as yet entered in the great
Sahara of sameness and reacting ennui. He
has a little bijou of a service, white Dresden
with white candlesticks shown off by red
candles, and flowers, and choice ornaments.
Choicest of all is Mrs. Wenham Lake Smith.
When, therefore, he bids me, I am glad. I
know, again, that both are not above a little
cooking, and have each a spécialité for a particular
dish. I know that we shall be served
on purely Russian principles, but on a miniature
Tom Thumb Muscovite principle, and that our
eyes shall rest on crystallised fruits from the
first scene to the end. I know that there will
be present another gentleman not old, yet
scarcely young, but youngish, of the clubs,
clubby, of the world, worldish; a lady, not
youngish, but young; a cousin perhaps, of
hers,—and we are then complete. I know, too,
that the other gentleman, not young, but
youngish, a dried, well-saved man, with an
imperial who should, according to the laws of
colour, be grey, but, curiously enough, is not,
will presently flash, and sparkle, and rebound,
squib-like, from edge to edge of that small
dining circus, becoming a temporary prandial
thing of beauty and joy for ever. Not by any
means a man of anecdote, a man of histories
and travels, who, at best, are a tedious sort of
people; anything in the shape of monologue or
recitation, or talk monopoly, being distasteful
in the highest degree. No, at the dispersion of
our elements I often cannot recollect a single
legend told, but there remains upon the
intellectual palate a taste as of many good things
said— of things, it may be accidents, rising
naturally out of the forward progress of dining
events, being taken up and placed in lights
irresistibly comic, and being bandied about— the
very shuttlecocks of bons mots— from side to
side, not suffered to drop for a good spell. We
have no liking for your " remarkably well informed
person." We don't want his stories or his information.

THE ENGLISHMAN IN BENGAL.

WHEN a very distinguished diplomatist once
suggested some very obvious and useful changes
in the department over which he presided, he
was met by the reply that though his suggestions
were admirable, and the reforms called
for, they would not be approved by the " Office."

It is a very singular fact that, go where
you will in our public service; take the Horse
Guards, or the Admiralty, step into the " Colonial,"
or the Board of Trade; and you will find
that there is a spirit of bureaucracy strong
enough to resist reformation, and perfectly
capable of baffling the best-intentioned reformer
who ever engaged in the correction of
abuse. Is it that as a people we are over-enterprising
and adventurous? Are we inherently
rash, headstrong, and uncalculating? Do we
rush madly into speculations, and are we so
much the sport of our temerity that we need all
the obstructive watchfulness of our "departments"
to save us from our rashness? This
certainly is not the way in which foreigners
would depict us, nor are these precisely the
traits they would ascribe to the "nation of
shopkeepers."

Whatever and how great may be our shortcomings,
it would be hard to say that we are
not a patient people. We saw our soldiers half
starved, and our ships half rotten; we read of
the most shameful frauds by contractors, and
dreadful shipwrecks in unworthy transports;
and yet, when the Office assured us that all precaution
was exercised and all system observed,
not an order unattended to nor a voucher missing,
we accepted our misfortunes as inevitable,
and persuaded ourselves that the infliction was
one against which human sagacity was powerless
to compete.

There was, however, one condition of our
fortunes which we never felt disposed to concede
to the Office. Whenever, from non-
success at home, the pressure of unlooked-for
calamity, or any of those reverses which sap
prosperity, we were driven to emigrate, to seek
out life in a new colony, we little brooked interference
or dictation. As pioneers in the bush,
or diggers in the mines, we insisted on the free
use of our thews and sinews, and proclaimed
that, however drilled and marshalled in the old
country, we expected in the new to be left to
the untrammelled employment of our resources.
Indeed, it is to the exercise of this individual
energy that we owe our national success in