Lawns smooth as velvet, great trees of centuries' growth, and fine houses of rich people, are on every side. But I like our own wild crags and breezy hillsides better; I like the great green sea, rolling smoothly on, and smashing over our rugged rocks, better than all those smooth eddied currents, with their smart racing-boats skimming about. If I could only catch these fellows outside the Skerries some day, with a wind from the northwest: wouldn't I spoil the colors of their gay jackets? 'ere's Skeff come again. He says he is going to dine with some very pleasant fellows at the Star and Garter, and that I must positively come. He won't be denied, and I am in such rare spirits about my appointment that I feel as if I should be a churl to myself to refuse, though I have my sore misgiving about accepting what I well know I never can make any return for. How I 'd like one word from you to decide for me! “I must shut up. I 'm off to Richmond, and they are all making such a row and hurrying me so, that my head is turning. One has to hold the candle, and another stands ready with the sealing-wax, by way of expediting me. Good-bye, dearest mother--I start to-morrow for home.--Your affectionate son, “Tony Butler.” CHAPTER XIV. DINNER AT RICHMOND With the company that composed the dinner-party we have only a very passing concern. They were--including Skeffington and Tony--eight in all. Three were young officials from Downing Street; two were guardsmen; and one an inferior member of the royal household,--a certain Mr. Arthur Mayfair, a young fellow much about town, and known by every one. The dinner was ostensibly to celebrate the promotion of one of the guardsmen,--Mr. Lyner; in reality, it was one of those small orgies of eating and drinking which our modern civilization has imported from Paris. A well-spread and even splendid table was no novelty to Tony; but such extravagance and luxury as this he had never witnessed before; it was, in fact, a banquet in which all that was rarest and most costly figured, and it actually seemed as if every land of Europe had contributed some delicacy or other to represent its claims to epicurism, at this congress. There were caviare from Russia, and oysters from Ostend, and red trout from the Highlands, and plover-eggs and pheasants from Bohemia, and partridges from Alsace, and scores of other delicacies, each attended by its appropriate wine; to discuss which, with all the high connoissèurship of the table, furnished the whole conversation. Politics and literature apart, no subject could have been more removed from all Tony's experiences. He had never read Brillat-Savarin, nor so much as heard of M. Ude,--of the great controversy between the merits of white and brown truffles, he knew positively nothing; and he had actually eaten terrapin, and believed it to be very exquisite veal!