MANNEBS AT TABLE.

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even down to bot pudding—on which they sleep. Others,of more limited means, content themselves with soup andbouilli only; and others, of still humbler resources, withmerely a bowlful of baked potatoes and black bread.

Such is, we conscientiously believe, a fair and unexagge-rated statement of the food partaken of by the middlc classesof ßhenish Prussia.

We now come in due course to speak of the habits of thePrussians at table.

Foreigners, generally speaking—even those belonging to"the politest nation in the w~orld"—seem to be less refinedin their conduct while feeding than the pair of Chimpanzeesthat daily dined in public at our Regent's Park ZoologicalGardens.

It is no unusual sight to see a Parisian dandy, while waitingfor his soup at a restaurant, clean his nails with bis fork, oruse the same implement as a tooth-pick.

But if Parisians exhibit little delicacy of feeling at theirmeals, Prussian ladies as well as gentlemen positively appalyou, as well as deprive you of all appetite for your dinner,by their barbarous mode of feeding.

The knife is not only used as a spoon, wherewith to scrapeup the last drop of gravy from the plate, by even the elite ofRhenish society, but thrust half down the throat by ladies whoaffect the fancied elegance of white kid gloves. So littleskilled, indeed, are the people in the use of a four-prongedsilver fork, that the wife of a member of the learned profes-sions assured us she preferred the old-fashioned two-prongedinstrument; and when we remonstrated, by reminding herthat it was impossible to eat peas with a miniature pitchfork,she replied that she "could do that quite well enough withher knife."