of such meetings to foster and gratify, and adds a tone of moral
vulgarity to the material vulgarity of the repast.

Is it impossible to bring about a reform in this important matter?
Difficult, not impossible. Dinner-giving is not an integral part of the
monarchy, and it might therefore be touched--if not too rudely--without
a political revolution. The grand obstacle would be the unsettled
claims. A has given B a show-dinner, and it is the duty of B to return
it. Invitation for invitation is the law of the game. How, then, stands
the account? Would it be necessary to institute a dinner-insolvency
court, where all defaulters might take the benefit of the act? We think
not. No creditor in his senses would refuse a handsome composition; and
if it could be shewn--as it might in the present case--that the
composition was in real, though not ostensible value, equivalent to the
debt, hesitation would vanish. Before proceeding to shew this, we shall
present what may be called the common-sense statement of the whole
case:--

Mankind in their natural state dine at noon, or at least in the middle
of the working-day. It is the middle meal of the day--the central of
three. In our artificial system of society, it has been postponed to a
late hour of the afternoon, so as either to become the second of two
meals, or, where lunch is taken, the third of three. The change is not
consistent with hygienic principle; for, if lunch be not taken, the
interval between breakfast and dinner is too great, and in that case
hunger tempts to make the meal too heavy for the exhausted powers of the
stomach: if, on the contrary, lunch be taken, dinner becomes an
absurdity, as in that case a meal so elaborate and heavy is not
required, and cannot healthfully be partaken of at so late an hour.
Nevertheless, in a plan of life which devotes the eight or nine hours