Whenever a number of persons meet together, eating and drinking seem to be a necessary bond of union; and they often do not separate without that kind of festivity which impairs the health of each, and creates dissensions, as it were, by its mechanical operation. The sole benefit which results from the social meals of the Arabs, is to us entirely unknown.—No man thinks himself incapacitated from injuring his neighbour, in consequence of having divided with him a loaf of bread, and a little salt, at the convivial board. In the East social intercourse is less artificial, and less hampered with rules. It is maintained with more complacency, and relinquished, not without hope of renewal. We too have now indeed abandoned a part of its more inconvenient formalities; but some of its oppressive and despotic laws continue unaltered. The exterior may be changed; but the substance is identical. In the East, they who are guilty of excess in drinking bury their inebriation in the gloom of their closet. By this, present disturbance, and future ill example are equally obviated, whatever may be the ill consequence to the wretched victim of intemperance. Of excess in eating there are few examples; for their longest meals, even when a series of dishes is presented, as at the tables of a Pasha or a Bey, are terminated in a few minutes. The moderation and temperance of diet indeed throughout the East are matters of high praise; and, whether virtues of climate, habit, or reflection, merit imitation among ourselves. The reward is present, uninterrupted health and tranquillity of mind. If the multitude of wants constitute human inquietude, it must be remembered how much of what to us is indispensable is, to them, as if it had never been. With them society is rendered tranquil and easy by mutual forbearance; with us it is vexed with the necessity of mutual adulation.—In the one region each man sets a fashion to himself, in the other all the constituent parts are wearied with serving an idol that the collective body alone has set up. Each stands bareheaded from respect to the other, when both might remain covered without inconvenience to either. Politeness is, with the one, an easy compliance, with which all are satisfied; with the other, it is a difficult effort, from the practice and the experience of which the parties mutually retire discontented. The fashions to which we are slaves, are indeed many of them so little founded in reason, that one is sometimes disposed to consider them as imagined by the indolent and restless, to occupy the thoughts and time of those who have no better employment; or invented, like certain dogmas, to shew the merit of implicit credence. A certain dress is to be worn, a certain establishment kept up, under pain of indelible ignominy; and the man whose circumstances disable him from complying with this terrific mandate, with timid irresolution hides his head.