gives us also a great coat
and a carriage.'"

We were not long driving to the Palais Royal. Very's was crowded to
excess--"A very low set!" said Lord Vincent, (who, being half a liberal,
is of course a thorough aristocrat) looking round at the various English
who occupied the apartment.

There was, indeed, a motley congregation; country esquires; extracts
from the Universities; half-pay officers; city clerks in frogged coats
and mustachios; two or three of a better looking description, but in
reality half swindlers half gentlemen. All, in short, fit specimens of
that wandering tribe, which spread over the continent the renown and the
ridicule of good old England. I know not why it is that we should look
and act so very disgracefully abroad; but I never meet in any spot
out of this happy island, a single Englishman, without instinctively
blushing for my native country.

"Garcon, garcon," cried a stout gentleman, who made one of three at the
table next to us. "Donnez-nous une sole frite pour un, et des pommes de
terre pour trois!"

"Humph!" said Lord Vincent; "fine ideas of English taste these garcons
must entertain; men who prefer fried soles and potatoes to the various
delicacies they can command here, might, by the same perversion of
taste, prefer Bloomfield's poems to Byron's. Delicate taste depends
solely upon the physical construction; and a man who has it not in
cookery, must want it in literature. Fried sole and potatoes!! If I had
written a volume, whose merit was in elegance, I would not show it
to such a man!--but he might be an admirable critic upon 'Cobbett's
Register,' or 'Every Man his own Brewer.'"

"Excessively true," said I; "what shall we order?"

"D'abord des huitres d'Ostende," said Vincent; "as to the rest," taking
hold of the carte, "deliberare utilia mora utilissima est."

We were soon engaged in all the pleasures and pains of a dinner.

"Petimus," said Lord Vincent, helping himself to some poulet a
l'Austerlitz, "petimus bene vivere--quod petis, hic est?"

We were not, however, assured of that fact at the termination of dinner.
If half the dishes were well conceived and better executed, the other
half were proportionably bad. Very is, indeed, no longer the prince of
Restaurateurs. The low English who have flocked there, have entirely
ruined the place. What waiter--what cook can possibly respect men who
take no soup, and begin with a roti; who know neither what is good nor
what is bad; w