The difference between a conversazione and a rout is simply this:—­in the former you are expected to talk or listen, but to be too ethereal to eat.  In the latter, to be squeezed in a crowd, and eat ices, &c., to cool yourselves.  A conversazione has, therefore, a great advantage over the latter, as far as the pocket is concerned, it being much cheaper to procure food for the mind than food for the body.  It would appear that tea has been as completely established the beverage of modern scientific men, as nectar was formerly that of the gods.  The Athenaeum gives tea; and I observed in a late newspaper, that Lord G——­ has promised tea to the Geographical Society.  Had his lordship been aware that there was a beverage invented on board ship much more appropriate to the science over which he presides than tea, I feel convinced he would have substituted it immediately; and I therefore take this opportunity of informing him that sailors have long made use of a compound which actually goes by the name of geo-graffy, which is only a trifling corruption of the name of the science, arising from their habit of laying the accent upon the penultimate.  I will now give his lordship the receipt, which is most simple.

Take a tin pot, go to the scuttle-butt (having obtained permission from the quarter-deck), and draw off about half a pint of very offensive-smelling water.  To this add a gill of vinegar and a ship’s buscuit broken up into small pieces.  Stir it well up with the fore-finger; and then, with the fore-finger and thumb, you may pull out the pieces of buscuit, and eat them as fast as you please, drinking the liquor to wash all down.

Now this would be the very composition to hand round to the Geographical Society.  It is not christened geography without a reason; the vinegar and water representing the green sea, and the pieces of buscuit floating in it the continents and islands which are washed by it.

Now, my lord, do not you thank me for my communication?

But we must return to the conversazione of Doctor and Mrs Feasible.

The company arrived.  There was rap after rap.  The whole street was astounded with the noise of the wheels and the rattling of the iron steps of the hackney-coaches.  Doctor Feasible had procured some portfolios of prints; some Indian idols from a shop in Wardour Street, duly labelled and christened, and several other odds and ends to create matter of conversation.  The company consisted of several medical gentlemen and their wives, the great Mr B——­, and the facetious Mr C——.  There were ten or twelve authors, or gentlemen suspected of authorship, fourteen or fifteen chemists, all scientific of course, one colonel, half-a-dozen captains, and to crown all, a city knight and his lady, besides their general acquaintance, unscientific and unprofessional.  For a beginning this was very well; and the company departed very hungry, but highly delighted with their evening’s entertainment.