The name "dinner" is said--although it seems incredible that words should have become so corrupted--to be a corruption of _dix heures_, the time at which (A.M.), in the old Norman days, the meal was usually partaken of; and the time at which (P.M.), in later years, when none of the guests ever knew the hour, in that loose-and-careless period, the meal was occasionally partaken of at Limmer's and at Lane's, in London town. Froissart, in one of his works, mentions having waited upon the Duke of Lancaster at 5 P.M., "after his Grace had supped"; and it is certain that during the reigns of Francis I. and Louis XII. of France, the world of fashion was accustomed to dine long before the sun had arrived at the meridian, and to sup at what we now call "afternoon tea time." Louis XIV. did not dine till twelve; and his contemporaries, Oliver Cromwell and the Merry Monarch, sat down to the principal meal at one. In 1700, two was the fashionable time; and in 1751 we read that the Duchess of Somerset's hour for dinner was three. The hour for putting the soup on the table kept on advancing, until, after Waterloo, it became almost a penal offence to dine before six; and so to the end of the century, when we sit down to a sumptuous repast at a time when farm-labourers and artisans are either snug between the blankets, or engaged in their final wrangle at the "Blue Pig." The Romans in the time of Cicero had a light breakfast at 3.30 A.M., lunched at noon, and attacked the _coena_ at periods varying between 3 and 7 P.M.--according to the season of the year. They commenced the first course with eggs, and each noble Roman was supposed to clear his palate with an apple at the conclusion of the third course. "A banquet with Vitellius," we read, "was no light and simple repast. Leagues of sea and miles of forest had been swept to furnish the mere groundwork of the entertainment. Hardy fishermen had spent their nights on the heaving wave, that the giant turbot might flap its snowy flakes on the Emperor's table, broader than its broad dish of gold. Many a swelling hill, clad in the dark oak coppice, had echoed to ringing shout of hunter and deep-mouthed bay of hound, ere the wild boar yielded his grim life, by the morass, and the dark grisly carcase was drawn off to provide a standing dish that was only meant to gratify the eye. Even the peacock roasted in its feathers was too gross a dainty"--especially the feather part, we should think--"for epicures who studied the art of gastronomy under Caesar; and that taste would have been considered rustic in the extreme which could partake of more than the mere fumes and savour of so substantial a dish. A thousand nightingales had been trapped and killed, indeed, for this one supper, but brains and tongues were all they contributed to the banquet; while even the wing of a roasted hare would have been considered far too coarse and common food for the imperial table." Talk about a bean-feast!