The hostess brightens, the host coruscates. The young lady on your right suddenly develops into a charming girl, with becoming appreciation of your pet topics and an astounding aptness for repartee. The Gorgon thaws, and implores Mr. Snapshot, whose jests are popping as briskly as the corks, not to be so dreadfully funny, or he will positively kill her. Belle Breloques can always talk, and now her tongue rattles faster than ever, till the languid one arouses himself like a giant refreshed, and gives her as good as he gets. The City men expatiate in cabalistic language on the merits of some mysterious speculation, the prospective returns from which increase with each fresh bottle. One of their wives is discussing the E.C.U. and the S.S.C. with a hitherto silent curate, and the other is jabbering botany to a red-faced warrior. The juniors are in full swing, and ripples of silvery laughter rise in accompaniment to the beaded bubbles all round the table. And all this is due to champagne, that great unloosener not merely of tongues but of purse-strings, as is well known to the secretaries of those charitable institutions which set the wine flowing earliest at their anniversary dinners. * * * * * A few recipes for sparkling wine cups gathered from various sources will conclude our work. Not having personally tested these we leave the responsibility of them to their respective authors--Soyer, Tovey, Terrington (“Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks”), &c.--premising that it is the merest folly to use a high-class champagne or a fine sparkling hock for a beverage of this description. Sparkling saumur, or the newly-introduced sparkling sauternes, and the cheaper hocks and moselles, will do equally well at a greatly reduced cost. In all cases, too, the kind of liqueur, the amount of sugar, and the flavouring with borage, verbena, pine-apple, or cucumber, may be varied to suit individual tastes. For soda or seltzer water we have invariably substituted Apollinaris, which is far better adapted for effervescent drinks of this description by reason of its purity and softness, its freedom from any distinct flavour, and above all its powerful natural effervescence. Soyer’s elaborate recipe for champagne cup for a large party is as follows:--