The dining-room is dedicated to Conviviality; or, as Cicero somewhere
expresses it, "Communitati vitæ atque victûs." There we wish most for
the society of our friends; and, perhaps, in their absence, most
require their portraits.

The moral advantages of this furniture may be illustrated by the
pretty story of an Athenian courtezan, "who, in the midst of a
riotous banquet with her lovers, accidentally cast her eye on the
portrait of a philosopher, that hung opposite to her seat: the happy
character of temperance and virtue struck her with so lively an image
of her own unworthiness, that she instantly quitted the room; and,
retiring home, became ever after an example of temperance, as she had
been before of debauchery."

NOTE g.

_Read antient looks, or woo inspiring dreams_;

The reader will here remember that passage of Horace, _Nunc
veterum libris, nunc somno, &c_ which was inscribed by Lord
Chesterfield on the frieze of his library.

NOTE h.

_And, when a sage's lust arrests then there_,

Siquidem non solum ex auro argentove, aut certe ex ære in
bibliothecis dicantur illi, quorum immortales animæ in iisdem locis
ibi loquuntur: quinimo etiam quæ non sunt, finguntur, pariuntque
desideria non traditi vultus, sicut in Homero evenit. Quo majus (ut