mules, to bring all the ladies to dinner, in order to meet the foreign
gentlemen. We were all seated higgledy-piggledy at table, dish after dish
came in; every one helped themselves, no carving was required, being all
made dishes. The master of the house was walking round the room with his
coat off, very comfortably smoking his cigar, and between every fresh dish,
of which there were some thirty or forty, the ladies amused themselves
with eating olives soaked in oil, and the colonel, (one of the military
pedlars), to prove that he understood foreign manners and customs, got the
ladies one after another to ask the foreign gentlemen to drink wine with
them, which was no small ordeal for us to run through. After these half
hundred dishes, came the sweets; then the gentlemen's flints and steels
were going, the room soon filled with smoke, and the ladies retired to
dress for the ball.

* * * * *


EARLY HOURS.


We learn that Mr. Cobbett dines at twelve o'clock on suppawn and butcher's
meat, that he sups on bread and milk at six, that he goes to bed at nine,
that he rises every morning of his life at four; that before ten o'clock
he has finished his writing for the day, and, that though no man has
written more than he has, that he never knew any one who enjoyed more
leisure than he does, and has done. "Now is there a man on earth who sits
at a table, on an average, so many hours in the day as I do? I do not
believe that there is: and I say it, not with pride, but with gratitude,
that I do not believe that the whole world contains a man who is more
constantly blessed with health than I am. In winter I go to bed at nine,