the lady, with a rapturous wink, "I
know--dying!" Such are the amenities of political strife.

A much more agreeable form of hospitality was the Garden-Party. When I
came to live in London, the old-fashioned phrase--a "Breakfast"--so
familiar in memoirs and novels, had almost passed out of use. On the
22nd of June, 1868, Queen Victoria signalized her partial return to
social life by commanding her lieges to a "Breakfast" in the gardens of
Buckingham Palace; and the newspapers made merry over the notion of
Breakfast which began at four and ended at seven. The old title
gradually died out, and by 1876 people had begun to talk about
"Garden-Parties."

By whichever names they were called, they were, and are, delightful
festivals. Sometimes they carried one as far as Hatfield, my
unapproached favourite among all the "Stately homes of England"; but
generally they were nearer London--at Syon, with the Thames floating
gravely past its lawns--Osterley, where the decorative skill of the
Brothers Adam is superimposed on Sir Thomas Gresham's Elizabethan
brickwork--Holland House, rife with memories of Fox and
Macaulay--Lowther Lodge, with its patch of unspoiled country in the
heart of Western London. Closely akin to these Garden-Parties were other
forms of outdoor entertainment--tea at Hurlingham or Ranelagh; and
river-parties where ardent youth might contrive to capsize the adored
one, and propose as he rescued her, dripping, from the Thames.

It is only within the last few years that we have begun to talk of
"Week-Ends" and "week-Ending." These terrible phrases have come down to
us from the North of England; but before they arrived the thing which
they signify was here. "Saturday-to-Monday Parties" they were called.
They were not so frequent as now, because Saturday was a favourite
night for entertaining in London, and it was generally bespoken for
dinners and drums. But, as the summer advanced and hot rooms became
unendurable, people who lived only forty or fifty miles out of London
began to ask if one would run down to them on Friday or Saturday, and
stay over Sunday. Of these hospitalities I was a sparing and infrequent
cultivator, for they always meant two sleepless nights; and, as someone
truly observed, just as you had begun to wear off the corners of your
soap, it was time to return to London. But there were people, more
happily constituted, who could thoroughly enjoy and profit by the weekly
dose of fresh air and quiet