He declareth against fish, the turbot being small--yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, against his first resolution.... He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough to him. The guests think they have seen him before. He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply that your other is the same as his own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half the familiarity he might pass for a casual dependent; with more boldness he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent. When the company breaks up, he proffereth to go for a coach--and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather, and will thrust in some mean and unimportant anecdote of the family. He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as 'he is blest in seeing it now.' He is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape; but after all, there was something more comfortable about the old tea kettle--which you must remember." [Illustration: DESIGNS OF SALT CELLARS. From an old Pattern Book issued by eighteenth-century Sheffield platers to Continental markets. The volume contains 86 full-page plates in copper engraving, illustrating various Sheffield plated articles. Date about 1784. (_At the Victoria and Albert Museum._) (_Reproduced by permission of the Board of Education._)] What a picture, graphic and piquant, of the closing years of the eighteenth century. Had the great standing salt survived how Elia would have revelled in his sly whimsical manner in portraying the exactitude with which it was fixed as a thermometer to register the correctitude of degrees of social affinity with the host. But the scattered plebeian trencher salts, as was the urn, which succeeded the copper kettle, were of the days when Sheffield and the silversmiths ran neck and neck. =The Pattern Books of Sheffield.=--Advertisement is often considered to be of modern origin. In the twentieth century it is true it has taken to itself attributes which might very well have been eliminated. The press is the fourth estate, and its power for good or evil is illimitable. It is obnoxious to find a page of advertisement printed on the cheap edition of a novel. It is a stab in the vitals to read an insidiously worded article carefully printed in an evening paper and find it only an advertisement. There is a Plimsoll mark in advertising, and modernity has not always agreed as to where this should be placed.