an uncaring unquestioning acceptance
of matters as they stand—a horror of talent
as low, and of unconventionally as not correct
—with this dreary phantasm sometimes regnant
among us, Business, however lumpy, coarse,
unrefined, can be received, provided it be properly
gilt; but Pleasure and her professors, however
clever, bright, and decent, are under the ban.
Yet the Business of Pleasure is carried on
in the most methodical manner, is of enormous
extent, employs countless "hands," and avails
itself of all the counting-house, clerk, day-book
and ledger system, without which respectability
cannot understand existence. To carry out the
Business of English Pleasure, men and women
are at this very time practising eight hours a day
in dreary little Italian cities under renowned
maestri, labouring against innumerable difficulties,
privations, and disappointments, and solely
cheered by the hope that on some future day
they shall be permitted to minister to pleasure
in London, and earn the meed reserved for a few
such ministrants. In the business of Pleasure,
acres and acres of English ground, and Rhenish
mountain, and French and Spanish plain, are set
apart and cultivated to the highest degree of
perfection; in the same interest hardy Norsemen
are salmon fishing; heavy Westphalian
boors, preposterously accoutred, are boar hunting;
blue-bloused Alsatian peasants are fattening
bilious geese; dirty Russians are oiling
cod-sounds. Those engaged in the Business of
Pleasure are of various stations, of various
temperaments, of various degrees of usefulness; but
from all is there required as strict honesty,
punctuality, and fidelity, as proper and earnest
a performance of their duties, as thorough rectitude,
as in any other condition in life.

Let us first of all adjourn to a Greenwich
dinner:

The Vessel, well-known Greenwich house,
built a few years ago, and rented by Mr. Waterman,
erst proprietor of the Ball and Coronet, an
old-fashioned tumble-down wooden edifice, lower
down the street. From the 1st of April to the
30th of September, Pleasure's business is in
full swing here, and never allows the smallest
relaxation. With a view to such business, and
nothing else, the Vessel was built; on the heading
of its bills it calls itself an hotel, but you
might search in vain on the Vessel's basement
for the commercial room; you might pass the
remainder of your life hunting without success
for the large family bedrooms, or the stuffy cupboards
in which bachelors are made to pass the
night. There are no baths, and no billiardroom,
no quaint assembly-room leading up three
steps at the end of the first-floor passage, and
smelling as if the ghost of our gavotte-dancing
grandmothers still inhabited it. You will never
find rows of boots with number-chalked soles
standing outside its chamber-doors, nor regiments
of bed-candlesticks on its hall table; no
"boots" lurks up its stairs at the chilly hours
of the morning to call any one who is going by
the first train, nor has such a thing as a " breakfast
order" ever been heard within its capacious
walls. From its cellar to its attic the Vessel
means dinner, and nothing but dinner. On its
ground floor are its hall, a lavatory, and the coffee-
room with its numbered tables and its cheery
look-out on the river. On the first floor are the
large rooms used for city companies, testimonial
dinners, and such like, at which between two
and three hundred guests often sit down
simultaneously; above, are the smaller rooms used
for private parties. Each of these rooms is
distinguished by a name the Nelson, the Beaufort,
the Wellington, &c., and the party in each
is accredited with the dinner, wine, &c., ordered
and consumed, in the following fashion. In the
bar sits the booking clerk at a desk; behind him
is a speaking pipe; at his side are two flexible
tubes, one descending to the cellar, the other to
the kitchen. Down the speaking pipe comes a
roar: "Wellington ice pudding, bottle of
decent hock." Book-keeper gives ice-pudding
order, but is slightly confounded about wine, so
calls up, "Wellington! sparkling hock did you
say?" Answer: "Decent hock, gentleman
said." "All right." Then down cellarman's
tube: "Wellington, bottle hock, No. 3." The
principal cellarman has two assistants, who are
despatched for wine while he books each order
against the particular room named. The system
of check is thus treble, and, at the end of the
evening when accounts are made up, three entries
of every order are brought forward— that is to
say, the waiter's who gives it, the booking-clerk
through whom it passes, and the cellarman who
executes it. The cellars are perfect marvels of
order and systematic detail, and so thorough is
the supervision, and so accurate the check, that
the superintendent, looking at the last stocktaking,
can reckon the consumption to the moment
of inquiry, and can at any time give you to
a bottle the exact state of any bin in the vast
cellarage. While on this subject it is worth
noticing that though the cellar contains numerous
specimens of rare wines and curious vintages,
it is very seldom indeed that they are called for.
Punch, sherry, and champagne, with the dinner
—and nearly always champagne—it seems to
be a fixed idea with Greenwich diners, more
specially with those who but seldom indulge in
such a luxury, that champagne is a positive
necessity. After dinner, by men of the present
generation, and at parties where ladies are present,
claret is generally drunk; but at the great
feeds of the City companies, at the testimonial
presentation dinners, at the annual gatherings
old gentlemen belonging to eccentrically-named
clubs institutions with a superstructure
of indulgence springing from a substratum of
charity— nothing but East India brown sherry
and sound port ever "sparkle on the board"
after the cloth has been removed from it.

On the first floor is a kitchen, which supplies
that and the floor above, while the house is
pierced with "lifts" for the speedy conveyance
of hot dishes and removal of plates, glasses, &c.
One of these lifts penetrates to the cellar, and
brings up the wine fresh and cool from the
deep dark bins; one fetches the fruit and