"After another mortal hour a servant enters, and announces that the tea and coffee are taken upstairs; we ascend. Mrs. Jackson advances to us immediately, she asks if we play or sing, and tells us how amiable we should be to do so--this is a request rarely addressed to an Englishman, one is too sure of a reply in the negative. Mrs. Jackson appears very much astonished that neither you nor I can satisfy her in this respect; and, after many protestations in order to convince her, she makes a sign to Miss Dorothy, the great musician of the family, who opens the piano, places her two feet on both the pedals, and begins a confused din, under which the instrument itself seems to suffer. When she has finished you will be much embarrassed to tell me whether it was an adagio, a waltz, or a quadrille which she has favoured us with. But, never mind; like great Mr. Crack, who is seated in his armchair, digesting his dinner, you cry out, 'Delightful!' This is all that is required. "At length midnight is nearly arrived, and ceremony and restraint, the _nous ne savons que faire_, still reigns at Mrs. Jackson's; having wished them good-night, let us go!" In No. XVI. of the _Original_, September 2, 1835, in an article on the "Art of Dining," there are the following criticisms on contemporary dining, which show that some of the sore points were known then:-- "It appears to me that nothing can be better contrived to defeat its legitimate end than a large dinner-party in the London season--sixteen, for instance. The names of the guests are generally so announced that it is difficult to hear them; and, in the earlier part of the year, the assembling takes place in such obscurity that it is impossible to see. There is often a tedious and stupefying interval of waiting, caused perhaps by some affected fashionable, some important politician, or some gorgeously decked matron, or, it may be, by some culinary accident. At last comes the formal business of descending into the dining-room, where the blaze of light produces by degrees sundry recognitions; but many a slight acquaintance is prevented from being renewed by the chilling mode of assembling. In the long days the light is more favourable, but the waiting is generally more tedious, and half the guests are perhaps leaving the Park when they ought to be sitting down to dinner.