most servants out of livery are in the highest mode, since these are always a superior class of menials. The habits of this quarter of the world give servants a very different estimation from that which they hold with us. Nobles of high rank are employed about the persons of princes; and, although, in this age, they perform no strictly menial offices, or only on great occasions, they are, in theory, the servitors of the body. Nobles have been even employed by nobles; and it is still considered an honour for the child of a physician, or a clergyman, or a shopkeeper, in some parts of Europe, to fill a high place in the household of a great noble. The body servant, or the _gentleman_, as he is sometimes called even in England, of a man of rank, looks down upon a mechanic as his inferior. Contrary to all our notions as all this is, it is strictly reasonable, when the relative conditions, information, habits, and characters of the people are considered. But servants here are divided into many classes; for some are scullions, and some are entrusted with the keys. It follows that those who maintain most of the higher class, who are never in livery, maintain the highest style. To say, he keeps a servant out of livery, means, that he keeps a better sort of domestic. Mere footmen always wear it; the _maitre d'hotel_, or groom of the chambers, and the valet, never. But to return to the dispensation, I made it a point to taste every dish that had been partaken of by the Nuncio and his neighbour; and I found that they were all fish; but fish so treated, that they could hardly know what to think of themselves. You may remember, however, that an Archbishop of Paris was sufficiently complaisant to declare a particular duck, of which one of Louis the Sixteenth's aunts was fond, to be fish, and, of course, fit to be eaten on fast-days.