It is true there are certain critical periods in a spring season, in which nature's fruits, still immatured, are brought to perfection by the fostering hand of man; and on these the deep and skilful in gastronomy will seize as apt occasions for a display of superior taste and refinement; then, and then only is it, as is well known, that cucumbers are lawful, green peas to be suffered, and strawberries and peaches tolerated; but beyond this there is even yet another point--"a grace beyond the reach of art"--the very North Pole of elegance--the paradox, it may be called, of the gastronomic system--it is to display these productions when positively they are not to be got. Happy the man who so succeeds--thrice happy Sir William, that on this day the stars so ordered it, that while London was yet innocent of cucumbers or peas, you should be profuse of both;--that when peaches and strawberries had not so much as crossed the thoughts of the most refined, they too in abundance graced your board. Oh! happy consummation of those honours, which from the last evening seemed about to centre round your head, and raise you to the pinnacle of gastronomy and of _ton_. During the first moments of all dinners a very few monosyllables are uttered--a sort of murmuring conversation then ensues between the parties nearest each other,--till at last one individual more gifted or more hardy than the rest hazards a remark across the table, and the talking becomes general. It was Lady Tilney who on the present occasion broke the monotony of those half-audible sounds that whispered round the table. "Lord Gascoigne," she said aloud, "I hope you are really going to put down that vile newspaper, The ----, it is a disgrace to London." "I should have thought that you, Lady Tilney, would rather have upheld a paper of its principles, and which affords such a proof of what you always profess to have so much at heart--the liberty of the press." "You must pardon me, it has nothing to do with the liberty of the press,--but a great deal with its abuse,--besides, the liberty of the press applies only to politics--not to private affairs." "_C'est selon_," replied Lord Gascoigne with provoking suavity of manner; "if we publish ourselves what we do, we court public remark." "She cannot forget or forgive," whispered Spencer Newcombe to Lord Baskerville, "that she herself was once the target at which some of the severest shots of this paper were sent." "How?" asked the latter. "Why, when, for party's sake, she was once about to take a step.... I cannot tell you about it now--some other time," he added, as he turned to Lady Boileau, who had asked the same question of him thrice. "Publish ourselves! my dear Lord," continued Lady Tilney to Lord Gascoigne, "why we never do that if our actions attract notice from our situation." "They should be more looked to," was the reply of the latter, interrupting her; "if there is nothing to censure, the satirist's occupation is gone."