"To a minute— punctual." Rinse tells me
this in a locomotive way, as he places
tumblers up and down the tables; and I
follow him as he speaks.

By a quarter before six, everything is
ready; a chair is planted before each plate.
Exactly at six, the soup is placed on the
table, and most of the guests are seated.

The same side-door which admitted the
Gibbleton directory opens, and the presiding
Duke is portentously ushered in. He is a
quiet, homely old gentleman. Along the
tables are many bald-headed old gentlemen,
dipping into their soup like a flock of white
birds in rows. There are many spruce young
gentlemen who are dining by proxy, for
fathers and uncles; and, who cannot be said
to neglect the duty which has been imposed
on them. As a general rule, I cannot
describe the company as conversational. It is
true, that one must not neglect to dine;
but a lively remark now and then helps
digestion. I remark that the sociality is
warmed up most rapidly among the
" gentlemen of the press," opposite to me. One of
these is an exception. He is young, and the
picture of misery. He would give the world
to be snug in his chambers in the Temple;
where the page of Macaulay awaits his
perusal; where his friend Bizley will call
this evening, on the chance of a game of
chess; but who will drop, in the dead silence,
a card into his letter-box—over which the
victim to dinner and public duty will sigh
when he returns.

At last, the cloth is removed. A youth
who wears moustachios, and whom we have
missed from his seat, lately—(having taken
him for a distinguished foreigner, and
wondered why he departed)—suddenly appears in
public at one end, and stands up with eight
others. They begin to sing—it is Non nobis.
Then come the " usual toasts." Then comes
the "toast of the evening."

I am bound to say that there is a decided
want of inventive genius among our
post-prandial orators. Could not the toast of Our
Hooping Cough Hospital, I submit, have been
proposed without our hearing over again the
unhappy old formula that  "Up to
so-and-so, and so-and-so, much had been done
for the afflicted;—the measled had had
their friends; the stutterer his asylum; the
squinter his home. ONE class remained to
be relieved," &c.

The important part of the evening's
formalities is the announcement of subscriptions.
Then it is, that the benevolent donor learns
what it is to feel the applause of his
fellow-citizens: he hears it thumped on the table,
and jingling from the wine-glasses. Then, the
cheek flushes, and the waistcoat heaves with
emotion, and the spirit spreads. Mr. Higg
subscribes "one guinea" (faint applause); Mr.
Snigg, "two pounds two" (increased applause);
Alderman Whallems, " five pounds " (cheers).
His Grace, the Noble President of the day,
"fifty pounds" (deafening cheers). The late
Miss Dorcas Cripplegate, of Peckham Rise,
"nine hundred and seventy-three pounds,
eight and eleven-pence, Three-and-a-quarter
per cent. stock " (tremendous applause, which
lasts for several minutes). All this is for the
good of the little Toms and Bettys of the
charity—who are occasionally brought in,
perched on a table, and told to cough, but by
no means to cry.

And so the evening wears on. Faint odours
of pine-apple, quinces, and figs, mixing with
the aroma of port and claret, and the dismal
sounds of a spiritless attempt "to return
thanks for the honour," &c., make one drowsy.
I rouse myself by a vigorous draught of cold
water, and am glad to emerge from among
the crowds of red faces and white neckcloths,
and sally out into the street. The night air
feels chilly.  Cab!

GOLD.

ROAD-MENDING is pretty general at this time
of the year, and upon roads now being newly
macadamized we may pick up a good many
differing specimens of granite. On the
newly-broken surface of one of them, four substances
of which it is composed can be perceived
with great distinctness. The more
earthy-looking rock, in which the others seem to be
embedded, is called felspar; the little hard
white stones are bits of quartz; the dark
specks are specks of hornblende, and the
shining scales are mica. Felspar, quartz,
hornblende, and mica are the four constituents of
granite. These are among the rocks of the
most ancient times, which form a complete
barrier to the power of the geologist in turning
back the pages which relate the story of our
globe   Layer under layer— leaf behind leaf
—we find printed the characters of life in all
past ages, till at last we come to rocks
—greenstone, porphyry, quartz, granite, and
others—which contain no trace of life; which
do not show, as rocks above them do, that
they have been deposited by water; but
which have a crystalline form, and set our
minds to think of heat and pressure. These
lowest rocks are frequently called "igneous,"
in contradistinction to the stratified rocks
nearer the surface, which have been obviously
deposited under water. Between the two there
is not an abrupt transition; for above the
igneous, and below the aqueous, are rocks
which belong to the set above them, insomuch
as they are stratified; while they belong
to the set below them —insomuch as they
are crystalline, contain no trace of life,
and lead us by their characters to think
of heat and pressure. These rocks, on
account of their equivocal position, are
called metamorphic.

Under the influence of air, combined with
that of water—water potent in streams, lakes,
and seas, but not less potent as a vapour in
our atmosphere, when aided by alternations