London is morally entitled to dine out; and when the quota was expended, the amiable host took the burthen upon his own shoulders, and endeavoured, as the phrase goes, "to draw out" his guests.
Oh, London dinners! empty artificial nothings! and that beings can be found, and those too the flower of the land, who, day after day, and day after day, can act the same parts in the same dull, dreary farce! The officer had discoursed sufficiently about "his intimate friend, the Soudan," and about the chain armour of the Sockatoo cuirassiers; and one of the M. P.'s, who was in the Guards, had been defeated in a ridiculous attempt to prove, that the breast-plates of the household troops of Great Britain were superior to those of the household troops of Timtomtamtomtoo. Mrs. Grey, to whose opinion both parties deferred, gave it in favour of the Soudan. And the man of science had lectured about a machine
