the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as
a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder
that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of
butcher's-meat, do not generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism
of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to
nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic
appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even
an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things
enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away
wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden
him,--a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part
of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding
high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a
wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially
nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my
memory as completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had
clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals, inspiriting us
to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen
supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with
little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a
to-morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case,
a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner.

Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, sat a young lady
in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because
not only the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character,
would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be
drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a
picture-frame, or the covers of a romance: not that I had ever met with
her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an
apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and
picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too
apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to
gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in
the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly
attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline
of the nose and forehead, and su