reunion should not be the satisfaction of the day's hunger. Only half of
this fact is seen by the classes who give the law to fashion, and that
half consists of the grosser and coarser necessity. They have already,
more especially at their country seats, taken to the tiffin of the East,
and at a reasonable hour make a regular dinner of hot meats, and all the
usual accessories, under the name of lunch. So complete is this meal,
that the ladies, led away no doubt by association, meet some hours
afterwards in mysterious conclave, to drink what our ancestors called 'a
dish of tea;' and having thus diluted the juices of their stomachs for
the reception of another supply of heavy food, they descend to dinner!

The evening dinner is, therefore, a mere show-dinner, or something
worse. But it is still more objectionable on the score of taste than on
the score of health. We find no fault with the elegances of the table,
in plate, crystal, china, and so forth; but an English dinner is not an
elegant meal. The guests are supposed, by a _polite_ fiction, to have
the hunger of the whole day to satisfy, and provision is made
accordingly. Varieties of soup, fish, flesh, fowl, game, rich-made
dishes, load the board spread for a group of well-dressed men and women,
known to have already dined, and who would affect to shudder at so heavy
a meal, if it was termed supper. There is a grossness in this
arrangement which is strangely at variance with the real advancement of
the age in refinement; but it has likewise a paralysing effect both upon
the freedom and delicacy of social intercourse. These show-dinners are
too costly to be numerous. Even a comparatively wealthy man is compelled
to look closely to the number of his entertainments. He scrutinises the
claims of his acquaintance; he keeps a debtor and creditor account of
dinners with them; and if now and then he invites a guest for the sake
of his social qualities, he sets him down in the bill of cost. This does
away with all the finer social feelings which it should be the province