How true is that maxim of Paulus AEmili-us, when he was to entertain the Roman people, after his glorious expedition into Greece: "There is equal skill required to bring an army into the field and to set forth a magnificent entertainment, for the object in the first case is to annoy your enemy as far as possible, and in the second to give pleasure to your friend." In the art of feasting, l'art des festins, as the gastronomic writers of the eighteenth century call it, the arrangement of the table is as important as the preparation of the food itself, for a good dinner badly served is a good dinner spoiled.

The first object that requires our attention in the dining-room is the table. It is the table that ought to regulate everything, the table itself being regulated by the normal stature of the people who are to use it. Whether round, rectangular, or rectangular with round ends, telescope table or table with inserted leaves, its size should be based on the fact that each person should be allowed 30 inches of space in width, and, in order to insure free circulation and perfect waiting, a space of six feet is demanded between the wall and the backs of the diners' chairs. The proportions to be observed in making the table are that the length may exceed the breadth by one quarter, one third, one half, and very exceptionally by three quarters for a large company. Outside of these proportions the equilibrium is destroyed and the service loses its fine order and unity ; we then fall into those long tables which are a series of tables juxtaposed - the unsociable tables of public banquets and monastic refectories. The above proportions and measures have been fixed by the experience of those who are most interested in a dinner, namely, those who eat it and those who serve it, and it is in accordance with them that the dining-room ought to be constructed, for the object of the dining-room is to contain the dining-table and its accessories, that is to say, chairs, dumb-waiters, side tables, and dressers strictly necessary for the service. These measures, ample as they are, do not imply an immense room, for, be it remembered, from the remotest antiquity the number of guests that can be admitted to an artistic dinner-table ought not to exceed that of the Muses, nor to be fewer than that of the Graces. The dining-room - the shape of which should be suggested by the shape of the table - needs two doors, one communicating with a drawing-room, and one with a butler's pantry, or indirectly with the kitchen.

Generally the modern dining-table errs on the side of too great solidity. The first quality of a table obviously is that it should be firm on its legs, but there is no reason for exaggerating its strength into clumsiness. Furthermore, the dining-table of richly carved oak, walnut, rosewood, or mahogany is a useless luxury; the ornamentation is misplaced and often fatal to knees ; the richness of the material itself is lost, inasmuch as the table is always covered with a cloth. A table, according to Dr. Johnson, is "a horizontal surface raised above the ground and used for meals and other purposes." Roubo, in his treatise on joinery and cabinet-making, written in the latter part of the eighteenth century (1770), says that tables are all composed of a top and of one or more feet which are fixed or movable or folding. Of all the furniture ever made, the French furniture of the eighteenth century seems to me the most rational, the most convenient, and the most tasteful. Of all the cookery ever achieved, that of the time of the Regent was probably the most exquisite. A contemporary of the petite soupers of the eighteenth century, Grimm, the author of the famous "Correspondance Litteraire," questions very much whether "the sumptu-ousness of the Roman tables could enter into any comparison with the studied refinement of the French." We may therefore ask with curiosity what kinds of tables were used, and we shall find in Roubo's "Art du Menuisier Ebeniste" the following excellent theoretical remarks on the subject:

"Eating-tables," says Roubo, "are not susceptible of any decoration; they consist simply of several planks of pine or some other light wood joined together with tongue and groove, and bound with oak at the ends. These tables, or rather these table-tops, are almost all of one shape, that is to say, a parallelogram larger or smaller according to the number of covers. Formerly eating-tables were made round or oval, but at present these forms are little used. The size of tables is determined, as I have just said, by the number of guests, to each of whom ought to be attributed at least two feet of room, or, better still, three feet, especially when there are many ladies at a meal, because their dresses take up much more room than those of men."

Roubo calculates his small, medium, and large tables on the basis of two feet for each cover, and his largest table for ten persons is six by five feet. When a larger number of guests had to be accommodated, recourse was had to leaves or flaps and to composite or juxtaposed tables. Grand feasts were always served on composite tables. Roubo thus sums up the practices of the eighteenth century in the matter of tables:

"Large tables are those which can not only accommodate a large number of guests, but also the middle of which is large enough to hold a surtout de decoration, either of flowers, sweetmeats, etc., which, with the number of covers given, determines precisely the size of these tables, on the principle that there should be two feet of room around the dormant, or plateau which forms the basis of the decorative centre-piece. As these tables are ordinarily very large, they are ,made up of a number of tables joined together with tongue and groove and held by clamps placed at intervals. These tables are placed as solidly as possible on trestles in such a manner that the trestles may be about a foot inside from the edge of the table so as not to inconvenience those who are seated around.