Now as to the length of a good dinner. Napoleon the Third insisted on being served in three-quarters of an hour. As usual here we run from one extreme to another. One of our most fashionable women boasted to me that she had dined out the day before, and the time consumed from the hour she left her house, until her return home, was but one hour and forty minutes. This is absurd. A lover of the flesh pots of Egypt grumbled to me that his plate was snatched away from him by the servant before he could half get through the appetizing morsel on it. This state of things has been brought about by stately, handsome dinners, spun out to too great length. One hour and a half at the table is long enough. A word about the decoration of the table. In this we are now again running from one extreme to the other. A few years ago, the florist took possession of the table, and made a flower garden of it, regardless of cost. Now, at the best dinners, you see perhaps in the centre of the table one handsome basket of flowers; no _bouquets de corsage_ or _boutonnières_; the table set with austere simplicity; a few silver dishes with bonbons and _compotiers_ of fruit, that is all. Now, nothing decorates a dinner table as flowers do, and of these I think the _Gloire de Paris_ roses, the Rothschild rose, and Captain Chrystie’s the most effective. A better result is produced by having all of one kind of flower, be it roses, or tulips, or carnations. It is now the fashion to have the most superb embroidered table-cloths from Paris, in themselves costing nearly a year’s income. But it is to be remembered that thirty years ago we imported from England the fashion of placing in the centre of the table a handsome piece of square scarlet satin, on which to place the silver. At the dinner the eye should have a feast as well as the palate. A beautifully laid table is very effective. I have seen Her Majesty’s table at Windsor Castle all ready for her. I have heard her footmen, in green and gold, re-echo from hall to kitchen the note that “dinner is served,” and then I was told to go; but I saw all I wanted to see. Her six footmen placed their hands on the little velvet Bishop’s cap, which covered the lion and the unicorn in frosted gold on the cover of her six _entrée_ dishes; as dinner was announced, this velvet cap was removed. The keeper of her jewel room has a large book of lithographs of just the pieces of gold plate that are to decorate Her Majesty’s table on different occasions, all regulated by the rank of her guest. Her Majesty, in the time of Prince Albert, dined at 8:15. Her head _chef_ informed me then that her real dinner was eaten at 2 P.M., with the Prince of Wales, and it was for this he exercised his talent. At eight and a quarter she took but soup and fish.