with here and there "a
three-times skimmed sky-blue" interposed; on each side of the Lord of
the Mansion, a philosopher--on each hand of the lady, a poet--somewhere
or other about the board, a Theatrical Star--a Strange Fiddler--an
Outlandish Traveller--and a Spanish Refugee. As Mr. Wordsworth rather
naughtily sayeth,

"All silent, and all damn'd!"

Still the roof does not fall, although the chandelier burns dim in
sympathy,

"And all the air a solemn stillness holds."

Will not a single soul in all this wide world, as he hopes to be saved,
utter so much as one solitary syllable? Oh! what would not the lady and
the gentleman of the house give even for a remark on the weather from
the mouth of poet, philosopher, sage, or hero! Hermetically sealed! Lo!
the author of the very five-guinea quarto, that lay open, in
complimentary exposure, at a plate, up stairs on the drawing-room
table--with his round unmeaning face "breathing tranquillity"--sound
asleep! With eyes fixed on the ceiling, sits at his side the profound
Parent of a Treatise on the Sinking Fund. The absent gentleman, who has
kept stroking his chin for the last half hour, as if considering how he
is off for soap,--would you believe it,--has just returned from abroad,
and has long been justly celebrated for his conversational talents in
all the coteries and courts of Europe. If that lank-and-leather-jawed
gentleman, with complexion bespeaking a temperament dry and adust, and
who has long been sedulously occupied in feeling the edge of his
fruit-knife with the ball of his thumb--do not commit suicide before
September,--Lavater must have been as great a goose as Gall. You might
not only hear a mouse stirring--a pin dropping--but either event would
rouse the whole company like a peal of thunder. You may have seen Madame
Toussaud's images,--Napoleon, Wellington, Scott, Canning, all sitting
together, in full fig, with faces and figures in opposite directions,
each looking as like himself as possible, so that you could almost
believe you heard them speak. You get rather angry--you wonder that they
don't speak. Even so with those living images. But the exhibition is
over--the ladies leave the room--and after another hour of silence, more
profound than that of the grave, all the images simultaneously rise up
and--no wonder people believe in ghosts--disappear.

A Return Dinner! Thirty people of all sorts and sizes, jammed--glued
together--shoulder to shoulder--kne