er dinner
was excellent; and every thing about her had an air of elegance and
splendor; of course she completely escaped the disgrace of being thought
a scholar, but not the suspicion of having a very good taste. I longed
for the removal of the cloth, and was eagerly anticipating the pleasure
and improvement which awaited me.

As soon as the servants were beginning to withdraw, we got into a sort
of attitude of conversation; all except the eulogist of l'Almanac des
Gourmands, who, wrapping himself up in the comfortable consciousness of
his own superior judgment, and a little piqued that he had found neither
support nor opposition (the next best thing to a professed talker), he
seemed to have a perfect indifference to all topics except that on which
he had shown so much eloquence with so little effect.

The last tray was now carried out, the last lingering servant had
retired. I was beginning to listen with all my powers of attention to an
ingenious gentleman who was about to give an interesting account of
Egypt, where he had spent a year, and from whence he was lately
returned. He was just got to the catacombs,

When on a sudden open fly,
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,

the mahogany folding doors, and in at once, struggling who should be
first, rushed half a dozen children, lovely, fresh, gay, and noisy. This
sudden and violent irruption of the pretty barbarians necessarily
caused a total interruption of conversation. The sprightly creatures ran
round the table to choose where they would sit. At length this great
difficulty of courts and cabinets, _the choice of places_, was settled.
The little things were jostled in between the ladies, who all contended
who should get possession of the _little beauties_. One was in raptures
with the rosy cheeks of a sweet girl she held in her lap. A second
exclaimed aloud at the beautiful lace with which the frock of another
was trimmed, and which she was sure mamma had given her for being good.
A profitable, and doubtless a lasting and inseparable association was
thus formed in the child's mind between lace and goodness. A third cried
out, "Look at the pretty angel!--do but observe--her bracelets are as
blue as her eyes. Did you ever see such a match?" "Surely, Lady
Belfield," cried a fourth, "you carried the eyes to the shop, or there
must have been a shade of difference." I myself, who am passionately
fond of children, eyed the sweet little rebels with co