Every one who was worth meeting was to be met at Dr. Molyneux's parties. Fashionable countesses, and pretty daughters of nameless citizens from far northern regions of commercial splendour beyond Islington and Hackney; cabinet ministers and briefless barristers; a popular actor who had been taken up by the aristocracy; literary men and African explorers; the very latest celebrity in the musical world; and the last promoter of the last company for the cultivation of the art of lace-making by spiders, or the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama--all these and many more were to be met in the Harley Street drawing-rooms, or on the Harley Street staircase; for it was only the more adventurous spirits who penetrated the drawing-room, or heard any thing but the highest notes of the last Scandinavian tenor. There were people who preferred the desultory snatches of conversation, and rapid circulation of new arrivals, on Dr. Molyneux's staircase to the splendid crush of his rooms. In the crowded drawing-rooms beauty waxed pale in the glare of lamps and tapers, but on the staircase wandering breezes from open windows and doors fluttered the gauzy draperies of youth and the stately plumage of age; and there was a dash of Bohemianism in the gaiety, which is apt to be pleasing to modern revellers. For a thorough-going, cross-country flirtation there was no place like Dr. Molyneux's broad landing. There were deep window-seats that must surely have been devised by some designing architect with a special view to the annihilation of masculine peace, and the triumph of feminine loveliness. There were stands of exotics whose friendly shade protected Edwin the briefless and Angelina the beautiful from the awful eye of Angelina's mamma. There were statuettes of marble and Parian, in pretended contemplation of which Celadon and Amelia could bask in the light of each other's eyes, while Amelia's papa was powerless to tear her from the companionship of her penniless adorer. There were voluminous curtains falling artistically from the carved cornices of massive doorways, beneath whose shelter irrevocable engagements were made, only to be broken by death, or the distracting complications of an ensuing season.