THE Duke of St. James dines today with Mr. Annesley. Men and things should be our study; and it is universally acknowledged that a dinner is the most important of affairs, and a dandy the most important of individuals. If we liked, we could give you a description of the fête which should make all your mouths water; but everyone cooks now, and ekes out his page by robbing Jarrin and by rifling Ude.

Charles Annesley was never seen to more advantage than when a host. Then his superciliousness would, if not vanish, at least subside. He was not less calm, but somewhat less cold, like a summer lake. Therefore we will have an eye upon his party; because, to dine with dandies should be a prominent feature in your career, and must not be omitted in this sketch of the ‘Life and Times’ of our young hero. The party was of that number which at once secures a variety of conversation and the impossibility of two persons speaking at the same time. The guests were his Grace, Lord Squib, and Lord Darrell. The repast, like everything connected with Mr. Annesley, was refined and exquisite, rather slight than solid, and more novel than various. There was no affectation of gourmandise, the vice of male dinners. Your imagination and your sight were not at the same time dazzled and confused by an agglomeration of the peculiar luxuries of every clime and every season. As you mused over a warm and sunny flavour of a brown soup, your host did not dilate upon the milder and moonlight beauties of a white one. A gentle dallying with a whiting, that chicken of the ocean, was not a signal for a panegyric of the darker attraction of a matelotte à la royale. The disappearance of the first course did not herald a catalogue of discordant dainties. You were not recommended to neglect the croquettes because the boudins might claim attention; and while you were crowning your important labours with a quail you were not reminded that the paté de Troyes, unlike the less reasonable human race, would feel offended if it were not cut. Then the wines were few. Some sherry, with a pedigree like an Arabian, heightened the flavour of the dish, not interfered with it; as a toady keeps up the conversation which he does not distract. A goblet of Graffenburg, with a bouquet like woman’s breath, made you, as you remembered some liquid which it had been your fate to fall upon, suppose that German wines, like German barons, required some discrimination, and that hock, like other titles, was not always the sign of the high nobility of its owner. A glass of claret was the third grace. But, if we had been there, we should have devoted ourselves to one of the sparkling sisters; for one wine, like one woman, is sufficient to interest one’s feelings for four-and-twenty hours. Fickleness we abhor.

‘I observed you riding today with the gentle Leonora, St. James,’ said Mr. Annesley.

‘No! her sister.’

‘Indeed! Those girls are uncommonly alike. The fact is, now, that neither face nor figure depends upon nature.’

‘No,’ said Lord Squib; ‘all that the artists of the present day want is a model. Let a family provide one handsome sister, and the hideousness of the others will not prevent them, under good management, from being mistaken, by the best judges, for the beauty, six times in the same hour.’

‘You are trying, I suppose, to account for your unfortunate error at Cleverley’s, on Monday, Squib?’ said Lord Darrell, laughing.

‘Pooh! all nonsense.’

‘What was it?’ said Mr. Annesley.

‘Not a word true,’ said Lord Squib, stifling curiosity.

‘I believe it,’ said the Duke, without having heard a syllable. ‘Come, Darrell, out with it!’

‘It really is nothing very particular, only it is whispered that Squib said something to Lady Clever-ley which made her ring the bell, and that he excused himself to his Lordship by protesting that, from their similarity of dress and manner and strong family likeness, he had mistaken the Countess for her sister.’

Omnes. ‘Well done, Squib! And were you introduced to the right person?’

‘Why,’ said his Lordship, ‘fortunately I contrived to fall out about the settlements, and so I escaped.’

‘So the chaste Diana is to be the new patroness?’ said Lord Darrell.

‘So I understand,’ rejoined Mr. Annesley. ‘This is the age of unexpected appointments.’

‘On dit that when it was notified to the party most interested, there was a rider to the bill, excluding my Lord’s relations.’

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ faintly laughed Mr. Annesley. ‘What have they been doing so remarkable?’

‘Nothing,’ said Lord Squib. ‘That is just their fault. They have every recommendation; but when any member of that family is in a room, everybody feels so exceedingly sleepy that they all sink to the ground. That is the reason that there are so many ottomans at Heavyside House.’

‘Is it true,’ asked the Duke, ‘that his Grace really has a flapper?’

‘Unquestionably,’ said Lord Squib. ‘The other day I was announced, and his attendant was absent. He had left his instrument on a sofa. I immediately took it up, and touched my Lord upon his hump. I never knew him more entertaining. He really was quite lively.’

‘But Diana is a favourite goddess of mine,’ said Annesley; ‘taste that hock.’

‘Superb! Where did you get it?’

‘A present from poor Raffenburg.’

‘Ah! where is he now?’

‘At Paris, I believe.’

‘Paris! and where is she?’

‘I liked Raffenburg,’ said Lord Squib; ‘he always reminded me of a country innkeeper who supplies you with pipes and tobacco gratis, provided that you will dine with him.’

‘He had unrivalled meerschaums,’ said Mr. Annesley, ‘and he was most liberal. There are two. You know I never use them, but they are handsome furniture.’

‘Those Dalmaines are fine girls,’ said the Duke of St. James.

‘Very pretty creatures! Do you know, Duke,’ said Annesley, ‘I think the youngest one something like Miss Dacre.’

‘Indeed! I cannot say the resemblance struck me.’

‘I see old mother Dalmaine dresses her as much like the Doncaster belle as she possibly can.’

‘Yes, and spoils her,’ said Lord Squib; ‘but old mother Dalmaine, with all her fuss, was ever a bad cook, and overdid everything.’

‘Young Dalmaine, they say,’ observed Lord Darrell, ‘is in a sort of a scrape.’

‘Ah! what?’

‘Oh! some confusion at head-quarters. A great tallow-chandler’s son got into the regiment, and committed some heresy at mess.’

‘I do not know the brother,’ said the Duke.

‘You are fortunate, then. He is unendurable. To give you an idea of him, suppose you met him here (which you never will), he would write to you the next day, “My dear St. James.”’

‘My tailor presented me his best compliments, the other morning,’ said the Duke.

‘The world is growing familiar,’ said Mr. Annesley.

‘There must be some remedy,’ said Lord Darrell.

‘Yes!’ said Lord Squib, with indignation. ‘Tradesmen now-a-days console themselves for not getting their bills paid by asking their customers to dinner.’

‘It is shocking,’ said Mr. Annesley, with a forlorn air. ‘Do you know, I never enter society now without taking as many preliminary precautions as if the plague raged in all our chambers. In vain have I hitherto prided myself on my existence being unknown to the million. I never now stand still in a street, lest my portrait be caught for a lithograph; I never venture to a strange dinner, lest I should stumble upon a fashionable novelist; and even with all this vigilance, and all this denial, I have an intimate friend whom I cannot cut, and who, they say, writes for the Court Journal.’

‘But why cannot you cut him?’ asked Lord Darrell.

‘He is my brother; and, you know, I pride myself upon my domestic feelings.’

‘Yes!’ said Lord Squib, ‘to judge from what the world says, one would think, Annesley, you were a Brummel!’

‘Squib, not even in jest couple my name with one whom I will not call a savage, merely because he is unfortunate.’

‘What did you think of little Eugenie, Annesley, last night?’ asked the Duke.

‘Well, very well, indeed; something like Brocard’s worst.’

‘I was a little disappointed in her début, and much interested in her success. She was rather a favourite of mine in Paris, so I invited her to the Alhambra yesterday, with Claudius Piggott and some more. I had half a mind to pull you in, but I know you do not much admire Piggott.’

‘On the contrary, I have been in Piggott’s company without being much offended.’

‘I think Piggott improves,’ said Lord Darrell. ‘It was those waistcoats which excited such a prejudice against him when he first came over.’

‘What! a prejudice against Peacock Piggott!’ said Lord Squib; ‘pretty Peacock Piggott! Tell it not in Gath, whisper it not in Ascalon; and, above all, insinuate it not to Lady de Courcy.’

‘There is not much danger of my insinuating anything to her,’ said Mr. Annesley.

‘Your compact, I hope, is religiously observe............