“At Homes,” with a small italicised “_Dancing_” in the corner; and a very brilliant affair it is, as the hostess herself is fully persuaded:--the front and back drawing-room, and the boudoir beyond that, are thrown open and lighted with dazzling brilliancy, whilst a softer lustre shed upon the conservatory and balcony, craftily covered in for the purpose, lures to those irresistible man-traps without betraying their insidious design. Below stairs, libraries and school-rooms and other resorts, devoted in every-day life to far more practical uses, are now cleared and emptied for the reception of shawls, cloaks, and coverings, and the production of countless cups of tea and glasses of lemonade. Lady Mount Helicon’s own maid, in a toilette of gorgeous magnificence, presides over this department, casting the while glances of covert scorn and envy at a younger and prettier assistant in a more becoming cap, on whom the dandies, as they enter, impress with unnecessary circumlocution the propriety of taking great care of their gregos, paletôts, and other sheep’s-clothing. In the dining-room preparations are making for a “stand-up supper” of unparalleled luxury, but we think it right to warn the champagne-drinking guests, that on passing the door in the morning we spied several hampers of that popular fluid, labelled with the _maker’s name_, and much as we admire its chemical preparation and laudable cheapness, we are concerned to admit that “the splendid sparkling of that house at 45_s._” always disarranges our internal economy for several days after an indulgence in its delights. Mount Helicon himself never drinks his mother’s champagne, and to his abstinence he attributes his own unfailing health. At Dinadam’s, or Lord Long-Acre’s, or Wassailworth, he does not by any means practise the same self-denial. Still it is doubtless good enough for a ball, and what with the young ladies, and the old gentlemen, and the servants, will experience a very fair consumption. A bearded band meanwhile is in waiting up-stairs, elaborately dressed, and from the conductor in white kid gloves to _the Piccolo_ in a chin-tuft, rejoicing in boots of jetty brilliancy, and neckcloths dazzling with starch. The whole establishment is so utterly at variance with its usual routine, and the house looks so entirely changed when thus stripped and lighted for reception, that if the old lord, who never permitted these _bouleversements_, could but come back, he would scarcely recognise his former home, and would unquestionably be glad to return to the quiet of his family vault. The presiding genius of the scene, the hostess herself, is already at her post. A very capital dressmaker, an abundance of well-selected jewellery, and a mysterious compound much enhancing the beauty of the human hair, have turned her out a very personable dame, and as she stands in the middle of her ball-room, as yet “monarch of all she surveys,” and spreads her