he guests were sometimes different. It was, in
fact, in this respect, like the evening company we occasionally find
assembled in the drawing-room on getting up from our show-dinners.

But such references to the customs of bygone ages are introduced merely
to shew, that among the most accomplished people of history, the social
meal was looked upon as a field for the display of taste, not of that
barbarian magnificence which consists in quantity and cost. The coena of
the moderns should far excel that of the Greeks in elegance, refinement,
and simplicity. We have all history for our teacher; we have a finer
system of morals; we have a purer and holier religion; and a
corresponding influence should be felt in our social manners. When the
object of the feast is no longer the satisfaction of mere physical
hunger, it should be something intended to minister to the appetites of
the mind. When the dinner is no longer the chief thing, some trouble
will doubtless be taken with the assortment of the company.
Simultaneously with the business of eating and drinking, we shall have
anecdote, jest, song, music, smiles, and laughter, to make us forget
the business or troubles of the day; and in the morning, instead of
arranging our debtor and creditor account of invitations, we shall throw
in the evening's gratification to strike the balance, and then make
haste to begin a new score.

TWO KINDS OF HONESTY.

Some few years ago, there resided in Long Acre an eccentric old Jew,
named Jacob Benjamin: he kept a seed shop, in which he likewise carried
on--not a common thing, we believe, in London--the sale of meal, and had
risen from the lowest dregs of poverty, by industry and self-denial,
till he grew to be an affluent tradesman. He was, indeed, a rich man;
for as he had neither wife nor child to spend his money, nor kith nor
kin to borrow it of him, he had a great deal more than he knew what to
do with. Lavish it on himself he could not, for his early habits stuck
to him, and his wants were few. He was always clean and decent in his
dress, but he had no taste for elegance or splendour in any form, nor
had even the pleasures of the table any charms for him; so that, though
he was no miser, his money kept on accumulating, whilst it occurred to
him now and then to wonder what he should do with it hereafter. One
would think he need not have wondered long, when there were so many
people suffering from the want of what he abounded in;