We slipped into a vacant chair by a gentleman from the Eastern Counties, who immediately informed us that Sir Robert Peel was all wrong, and the agricultural interest blown to shivers. This gentleman had little pieces of sticking-plaster stuck all over him, and we thought his discontent had broken out in an eruption, until he informed us that he had been ‘going it, all last week’ with some ruined friends of his who were also in town, and that ‘champagne and claret always had that effect upon him.’ On our left hand, was an undertaker from Whitechapel. “Here’s a bill,” says he; “this General Interment! What’s to become of my old hands who haven’t been what you may call rightly sober these twenty years? Ain’t there _any_ religious feeling in the country?” The company had come, like the fish, from various distances. There was a respectable Jew provision-merchant from Hamburg, over the way. Next him, an old man with sunken jaws that were always in motion, like a gutta percha mouth that was being continually squeezed. He had come from York. Hard by, a very large smooth-faced old gentleman in an immense ribbed satin waistcoat, out of Devonshire, attended by a pink nephew who was walking the London Hospitals. Lower down, was a wooden leg that had brought the person it belonged to, all the way from Canada. Two ‘parties,’ as the waiter called them, who had been with a tasting-order to the Docks, and were a little scared about the eyes, belonged to Doncaster. Pints of stout and porter were handed round, agreeably to their respective orders. Everybody took his own pint pot to himself, and seemed suspicious of his neighbour. As the minute hand of the clock approached a quarter past four, the gentleman from the Eastern Counties whispered us, that if the country held out for another year, it was as much as he expected. Suddenly a fine salmon sparkled and twinkled like a silver harlequin before Mr. Simpson. A goodly dish of soles was set on lower down; then, in quick succession, appeared flounders, fried eels, stewed eels, cod fish, melted butter, lobster-sauce, potatoes. Savoury steams curled and curled about the company’s heads, and toyed with the company’s noses. Mr. Simpson hammered on the table. Grace! For one silent moment, Mr. Simpson gazed upon the salmon as if he were the salmon’s admiring father, and then fell upon him, and helped twenty people without winking. Five or six flushed waiters hurried to and fro, and played cymbals with the plates; the company rattled an accompaniment of knives and forks; the fish were no more, in a twinkling. Boiled beef, mutton, and a huge dish of steaks, were soon disposed of in like manner. Small glasses of brandy round, were gone, ere one could say it lightened. Cheese melted away. Crusts dissolved into air. Mr. Simpson was gay. He knew the worst the company could do. He saw it done, twice every day. Again he hammered on the table. Grace!