"I am afraid I must be going back. I am only paired till eleven. Good-night, and so many thanks." "Good-night; you will always find some dinner here on Government nights. Do look in again!" These are the cheerful echoes of parliamentary homes in the older and better days of unostentatious entertaining, and those "pot luck" dinners often played an important part in political manoeuvre. Sir George Trevelyan, whose early manhood was passed in the thick of parliamentary society, tells us, in a footnote to "The Ladies in Parliament," that in the season of 1866 there was much gossip over the fact of Lord Russell having entertained Mr. Bright at dinner, and that people were constantly-- "Discussing whether Bright can scan and understand the lines About the Wooden Horse of Troy; and when and where he dines. Though gentlemen should blush to talk as if they cared a button Because one night in Chesham Place he ate his slice of mutton." Quite apart from parliamentary strategy, impromptu entertaining in what was called "a friendly way" had its special uses in the social system. There is a delicious passage in "Lothair" describing that hero's initiation into an easier and more graceful society than that in which he had been reared: "He had been a guest at the occasional banquets of his uncle, but these were festivals of the Picts and Scots; rude plenty and coarse splendour, with noise instead of conversation, and a tumult of obstructive dependants, who impeded by their want of skill the very convenience which they were purposed to facilitate." An amazing sentence indeed, but like all Lord Beaconsfield's writings, picturesquely descriptive, and happily contrasted with the succeeding scene: "A table covered with flowers, bright with fanciful crystal, and porcelain that had belonged to Sovereigns who had given a name to its colour or its form. As for those present, all seemed grace and gentleness, from the radiant daughters of the house to the noiseless attendants who anticipated all his wants, and sometimes seemed to suggest his wishes."