The month of August is so unfashionable in London that going a few days since to Greenwich, that famous resort, I found it possible to get but half a dinner. The hotel (where you are supposed to be able to obtain one of the best dinners in England) had put out its stoves and locked up its pantry. But for this discovery I should have mentioned the little expedition to Greenwich as a charming relief to the monotony of a London August. Greenwich and Richmond are, classically, the two suburban dining-places. I don't know how it may be at this time with Richmond, but the Greenwich incident brings me back (I hope not once too often) to the element of what has lately been called "particularism" in English pleasures. It was in obedience to a perfectly logical argument that the Greenwich hotel had, as I say, locked up its pantry. All genteel people leave London after the first week in August, _ergo_ those who remain behind are not genteel, and cannot therefore rise to the conception of a "fish dinner." Why, then, should we have anything ready? I had other impressions, fortunately, of this interesting suburb, and I hasten to declare that during the genteel period the dinner at Greenwich is the best of all dinners. It begins with fish and it continues with fish: what it ends with--except songs and speeches and affectionate partings--I hesitate to affirm. It is a kind of mermaid reversed; for I do know, in a vague way, that the tail of the creature is elaborately and interminably fleshy. If it were not grossly indiscreet I should risk an allusion to the particular banquet which was the occasion of my becoming acquainted with the Greenwich _cuisine_. I should say that it is very pleasant to sit in a company of clever and distinguished men before the large windows that look out upon the broad brown Thames. The ships swim by as if they were part of the entertainment and put down in the bill: the afternoon light fades ever so slowly. We eat all the fish of the sea, and wash them down with liquids that bear no resemblance to salt water. We partake of any number of those sauces with which, according to the French adage, one could dine upon one's grandmother. To speak of the particular merits of my companions would indeed be indiscreet, but there is nothing indelicate in expressing a high appreciation of the manly frankness and robustness of English conviviality. The stranger--the American at least--who finds himself in the company of a number of Englishmen assembled for a convivial purpose becomes conscious of a certain indefinable and delectable something which, for want of a better name, he will call their superior richness of temperament. He takes note of the liberal share of the individual in the magnificent temperament of the race. This seems to him one of the finest things in the world, and his satisfaction will take a keener edge from such an incident as the single one I may permit myself to mention.