"Donnez-nous une sole frite pour un, et des pommes de terre pour trois!" "Humph!" said Lord Vincent; "fine ideas of English taste these garcons must entertain; men who prefer fried soles and potatoes to the various delicacies they can command here, might, by the same perversion of taste, prefer Bloomfield's poems to Byron's.

Delicate taste depends solely upon the physical construction; and a man who has it not in cookery, must want it in literature.

Fried sole and potatoes!! If I had written a volume, whose merit was in elegance, I would not show it to such a man!--but he might be an admirable critic upon 'Cobbett's Register,' or 'Every Man his own Brewer.'" "Excessively true," said I; "what shall we order ?" "D'abord des huitres d'Ostende," said Vincent; "as to the rest," taking hold of the carte, "deliberare utilia mora utilissima est." We were soon engaged in all the pleasures and pains of a dinner.
"Petimus," said Lord Vincent, helping himself to some poulet a l'Austerlitz, "petimus bene vivere--quod petis, hic est ?" We were not, however, assured of that fact at the termination of dinner.
If half the dishes were well conceived and better executed, the other half were proportionably bad.

Very is, indeed, no longer the prince of Restaurateurs.

The low English who have flocked there, have entirely ruined the place.