I am told that in England the principle sight on Christmas-eve are the shops of the butchers and poulterers hung with the dead carcases of animals newly slaughtered, in whose mouths are thrust bunches of prickly holly, at which agreeable spectacle the passers-by gape with gluttonous approval.  Surely there is nothing graceful about such a commemoration of the birth of Christ as this? nothing picturesque, nothing poetic?—­nothing even orthodox, for Christ was born in the East, and the Orientals are very small eaters, and are particularly sparing in the use of meat.  One wonders what such an unusual display of vulgar victuals has to do with the coming of the Saviour, who arrived among us in such poor estate that even a decent roof was denied to Him.  Perhaps, though, the English people read their gospels in a way of their own, and understood that the wise men of the East, who are supposed to have brought the Divine Child symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, really brought joints of beef, turkeys, and “plum-pudding,” that vile and indigestible mixture at which an Italian shrugs his shoulders in visible disgust.  There is something barbaric, I suppose, in the British customs still—­something that reminds one of their ancient condition when the Romans conquered them—­when their supreme idea of enjoyment was to have an ox roasted whole before them while they drank “wassail” till they groveled under their own tables in a worse condition than overfed swine.  Coarse and vulgar plenty is still the leading characteristic at the dinners of English or American parvenus; they have scarcely any idea of the refinements that can be imparted to the prosaic necessity of eating—­of the many little graces of the table that are understood in part by the French, but that perhaps never reach such absolute perfection of taste and skill as at the banquets of a cultured and clever Italian noble.  Some of these are veritable “feasts of the gods,” and would do honor to the fabled Olympus, and such a one I had prepared for Guido Ferrari as a greeting to him on his return from Rome—­a feast of welcome and—­ farewell!

All the resources of the hotel at which I stayed had been brought into requisition.  The chef, a famous cordon bleu, had transferred the work of the usual table d’hote to his underlings, and had bent the powers of his culinary intelligence solely on the production of the magnificent dinner I had ordered.  The landlord, in spite of himself, broke into exclamations of wonder and awe as he listened to and wrote down my commands for different wines of the rarest kinds and choicest vintages.  The servants rushed hither and thither to obey my various behests, with looks of immense importance; the head waiter, a superb official who prided himself on his artistic taste, took the laying-out of the table under his entire superintendence, and nothing was talked of or thought of for the time but the grandeur of my proposed entertainment.