The Art, then, even the Poetry, of Dining, may be thoroughly studied in London at the present day. Every passing mood may be consulted, every gastronomic fancy indulged. You may choose your company as you choose your _menu_; you may make a free selection from the quality of either. You have but to know exactly beforehand what you want. If the lady whom you honour be frivolous by nature, you can take her to the smart restaurant of the Hotel Bristol, and to a comedy adapted "from the French"; if she be serious, to the "Grand Hotel," and then to Shakespeare; if crude, to Frascati's and to melodrama. But, whether you choose expensive dining places or cheap ones, and in whatever manner you may elect to spend your long London day, one thing is certain, that at its close you will generally find yourself to have spent a considerable sum. For, howe'er improved and reformed, in essentials the city is yet not much changed since the days of John Lydgate, who found, he says, to his cost, and even so early as the fifteenth century that: "lacking mony I mighte not spede." CHAPTER XIV THE GALLERIES, MUSEUMS, AND COLLECTIONS "Infinite riches in a little room." "The great city has an unbroken history of 1,000 years, and has never been sacked by an enemy."--_Sir Walter Besant._ "Great are your privileges. For you is collected in the public palaces of London all that human genius has ever achieved, all that power and wealth can procure. For you has been dug from the earth all that remains of mighty empires and long-vanished civilisations. The arts of Greece and Rome, and Egypt and Assyria, and the not less wonderful arts of India, are all contributory to your pleasures. The whole art and mystery of painting is unfolded for you on the walls of our National Gallery.... You are rich indeed, for you are the heirs of all the Ages." Are picture-galleries, museums, and such-like treasures of the metropolis, to be described as London's Highways, or as its Byways? That they ought to be the former, is certain; as certain as that they are but too often used as the latter, or are, at any rate, regarded as refuges and shelters from the inclemency of the outer air. For Art, like Religion, has a tendency in this respect, to serve not so much as a cloak, as in the capacity of an umbrella. And it is sometimes conveniently adapted to yet other profane uses: "This 'ere ain't a gymnasium, nor yet a refreshment room," I have heard a much-enduring officer of the law remark, more in sorrow than in anger, to a too-presuming visitor, who, seated opposite the _Ansidei Madonna_, was placidly feeding such of her offspring as were not engaged in playing leap-frog over the chairs, with crumbly bath-buns. [Illustration: _A Sketch in Trafalgar Square._]