which our rulers meet together to congratulate one another upon the approaching close of the Parliamentary session,--the famous 'whitebait dinner,' which within the last two years has fallen into abeyance, perhaps never to be revived. Mr. Harris, the founder of the family and father of the first Earl Malmesbury, was then (1763) a Lord of the Admiralty; and Mrs. Harris describes a 'most agreeable expedition on the Thames,' which she had with a party in the 'Admiralty barge.' After seeing Woolwich and all its military wonders, the lady says:-- 'We got back to Greenwich to dine. We had the smallest fish I ever saw, called whitebait: they are only to be eat at Greenwich, and are held in high estimation by the epicures; they are not so large as the smallest of minnows, but are really very good eating. We dined in a charming place in the open air, which commanded a fine view of the Thames; but were obliged to leave it at six o'clock, as the tide was so cruel as not to stay for us--and they never venture to shoot the bridge [old London bridge] with the Admiralty barge at low water. We had a beastly walk through the Borough after we landed.' Let us now quit old England for a moment to take a passing glance at the Continent. As we have already said, the 'Diaries and Correspondence' of the first Earl of Malmesbury are a rich mine of political information and personal anecdote concerning the leading Courts of Europe; but we must here confine our few gleanings of this kind from the newly published 'Letters,' and content ourselves with some sketches of the state of matters in France, in the period of decay and rottenness which preceded the outburst of the terrible but life-reviving Revolution. Young Mr. Harris (afterwards the first Earl), then only in his twenty-second year, is passing through Paris in November, 1768, on his way to assume a diplomatic post at Madrid, and thus he writes of the French capital:-- 'I see no new improvements since I was last here; and, except a few new fashions for caps and muffs, I believe nothing has changed materially. On such subjects alone do this lively people exercise their inventive faculties, since the decease of Louis le Grand. They have now no capital painters, few good sculptors, and still fewer good authors; for the modern set of French writers are either totally devoid of talents, or else employ them in such a manner, and on such subjects, as to render their works of very little use to the community. To pass for an _esprit fort_ is all their ambition; and when a man has written down all religions, without distinction, they cry, "_Pardi! c'est un grand homme: il pense hardiment!_"'