attempted description of a Lord-Mayor's
dinner at the Mansion-House in London. I should have preferred the
annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good-fortune to witness it.
Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular
dinners, and gladly accepted it,--taking the precaution, nevertheless,
though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a
mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence,
and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to
open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful
hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented
myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion-House, at half-past six
o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous
apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion-House
was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is
a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his
traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed,
however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious
Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of life-long integrity
was a seat in the Lord-Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real
dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do,
sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted
and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only
second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the
Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants
of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were
mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the
early days of our country; so that the Lord-Mayor was a potentate of
huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be
hardly second to the prime-minister of the throne. The true great men of
the city now appear to have aims beyond city-greatness, connecting
themselves with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the
aristocracy of the country.

In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a
livery of blue and buff, in which they looked wonderfully like American
Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery
than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wea