s of getting
forward, he countermanded his horses, and accepted the invitation.

Sir Robert, whose taste for good living was indisputable, no sooner read
the note acceding to his request than he called his _attaches_ together,
and said, "Gentlemen, you will have a very bad dinner to-day, but
I request you will all dine here, as I have a particular object in
expressing the wish."

Dinner-hour came; and after the usual ceremony the party were seated at
table, when a single soup appeared: this was followed by a dish of
fish, and then, without _entree_ or _hors d'oevre_, came a boiled leg
of mutton, Sir Robert premising to his guest that it was to have no
successor: adding, "You see, sir, what a poor entertainment I have
provided for you; but to this have the miserable economists in
Parliament brought us--next session may carry it further, and leave us
without even so much." Joseph was sold, and never forgot it since.

I saw, that while Sir Gordon and I discussed people and events in this
strain, Lucy became inattentive and pre-occupied by other thoughts; and
on charging her with being so, she laughingly remarked that Englishmen
always carry about with them the one range of topics; and whether they
dine in Grosvenor Square, or beneath an olive-tree in the Alps, the
stream of the table-talk is ever the same. "Now a Frenchman," said she,
gaily, "had uttered I cannot say how many flat sentimentalisme about the
place we are in; a German had mysticised to no end; and an Italian would
have been improvising about every thing, from the wire that restrained
the champagne cork to the woes of enchained Italy. Tell us a story, Mr.
Templeton."

"A story! What shall it be? A love story? a ghost story? a merry, or a
sad one?"

"Any of these you like, so that it be true. Tell me something that has
actually happened."

"That is really telling a secret," said I; "for while truth can be,
and oftener is, stranger than fiction, it is so, rather from turning
ordinary materials to extraordinary uses--making of every-day people
singular instances of vice and virtue--than for any great peculiarity in
the catastrophes to which they contribute."

"Well, I don't believe in the notion of everyday people. I have a
theory, that what are so summarily disposed of in this fashion are just
as highly endowed with individualities as any others. Do you remember a
beautiful remark, made in the shape of a rebuke, that Scott one day gave
his daughter for