A
miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable
ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion
being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest
wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what
not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what
it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political
hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine,
without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with
English taste.

The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present
took place during assize time, and included among the guests the judges
and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town-Hall at seven
o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed
footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom
it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the
reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the
course of these transmissions; so that I had the advantage of making my
entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company,
but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and
put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very
affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my
nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost
invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of
his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new
acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease; and, in requital
of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company
in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing
silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been
half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment.

There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers
of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the
mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, with
whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky
over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and
mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out,
with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, a