as if “moulded on a porringer,” This shadowy form was, I was told, a metaphysician, and certainly he gave me the idea of having come into the world for the express purpose of illustrating the extension of tenuity. He drank nothing but toast and water, and consequently had the advantage of preserving such store of faculties as he brought to the entertainment, in all their clearness, when his neighbours were “veiled in mist;” but either the measure was so small, or the nature of his _wares_ prevented them from being pilfered. Whatever the reason, so it was, that he seemed to enjoy all the ease of a sinecure in guarding his mental property from depredation. He, and his ample companion, threw glances at each other of mutual contempt every now and then, and from time to time, as opportunity presented itself, kept up at intervals a meagre snarl, altogether divested of wit or point, till the big man, who, of a class that it might be presumed “Had but seldom known the use Of the grape’s surprising juice,” became so top heavy, that I saw his head gently let down, as if by a pully and tackle, on the shoulder of the metaphysician, who not inclined to enact the prop to a fallen foe, disengaged himself so abruptly from this mountain of the muses (for Behemoth is a poet), that the chair on which he sat, having glided away, the latter came down on the floor plump, like a full sack that had broken from the crane. My gravity was not proof against this downfall of Parnassus, and I made my way up stairs as quickly as I could, only lagging behind a sufficient length of time for the water-drinking philosopher to be lodged before me. Oh ye gods, what an exhibition did I open upon! the only similitude which I can find at hand for the drawing-room that presented itself, was a glass of some highly bottled liquid, in which a froth of white muslin occupied the upper, and a sediment of black cloth its lower extremity. Not a sound was to be heard as I entered the room; but I soon perceived that the _et ceteras_ of coffee, tea, cakes, and bread and butter, were not at all more indifferent in the superior, than soups, meats, and wine had been in the inferior regions of this intellectual _festum_. It quite astonished me to see the quantity of all these appurtenances of the _soireé_, that almost immediately vanished, “leaving not a wreck behind.” During the consumption of these mere _creatures_ of the entertainment, certain solemn sentences were fired at intervals, after the manner of minute guns, each succeeded by a deadly pause. The gentlemen below stairs sat a long time, but I was resolved to see _out_ the evening, ere I passed judgment on a party of the literati. At length the authors ascended, and, had I been a young lady, I should have felt most unwilling ----“to meet the rudeness and swilled insolence Of such late wassailers;”