ve considerable difficulty
in enumerating even six such as fairly to warrant the praise I have
pronounced.

In the first place, the table d'hote, to possess all the requisites I
desire, should not have its _locale_ in any first-rate city, like Paris,
London, or St. Petersburg; no, it should rather be in Brussels, Dresden,
Munich, Berne, or Florence. Again, it should not be in the great
overgrown mammoth-hotel of the town, with three hundred daily devourers,
and a steam-engine to slice the _bouilli_. It should, and will usually,
be found in some retired and quiet spot--frequently within a small
court, with orange-trees round the walls, and a tiny modest _jet d'eau_
in the middle; a glass-door entering from a flight of low steps into a
neat ante-chamber, where an attentive but unobtrusive waiter is ready
to take your hat and cane, and, instinctively divining your dinner
intentions, ushers you respectfully into the salon, and leans down your
chair beside the place you select.

The few guests already arrived have the air of _habitues_; they are
chatting together when you enter, but they conceive it necessary to do
the honours of the place to the stranger, and at once include you in
the conversation; a word or two suffices, and you see that they are not
chance folk, whom hunger has overtaken at the door, but daily visitors,
who know the house and appreciate it. The table itself is far from
large--at most sixteen persons could sit down at it; the usual number is
about twelve or fourteen. There is, if it be summer, a delicious bouquet
in the midst; and the snowy whiteness of the cloth and the clear lustre
of the water strike you instantly. The covers are as bright as when they
left the hands of the silversmith, and the temperature of the room at
once shows that nothing has been neglected that can contribute to the
comfort of the guests. The very plash of the fountain is a grateful
sound, and the long necks of the hock-bottles, reposing in the little
basin, have an air of luxury far from unpleasing. While the champagne
indulges its more southern character in the ice-pails in the shade, a
sweet, faint odour of pineapples and nectarines is diffused about;
nor am I disposed to quarrel with the chance view I catch, between the
orange-trees, of a window where asparagus, game, oranges, and melons
are grouped confusedly together, yet with a harmony of colour and effect
Schneider would have gloried in. There is a noiseless activity ab