The knives and forks used at Anglo-Saxon tables are generally larger and heavier than comfort requires. French knives and forks are smaller and quite strong enough for all food that figures on a civilized table. The knife never exceeds nine and three quarters inches in length, the small knives seven and three quarters inches, and the large forks eight and one quarter inches. Simple knives and forks seem to me to be desirable, and all heavy and elaborate ornamentation should be avoided, especially ornamentation in high relief, which is irritating to handle. On the other hand, variety may be charming. At a dainty dinner I would have knives and forks of a different pattern with every dish.

The glasses that figure on a table will depend on the wines served; they should be convenient and elegant in form, and dependent for their charm simply on the purity of the crystal and the beauty of their silhouette. Engraved glass, cut glass, and colored glass is used very sparingly by people of taste. Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne wines should be drank out of nothing but the purest crystal glass, which conceals none of their qualities of color or scintillation. It is the custom to drink German wines out of colored glasses. Liqueur glasses are often colored also, but it seems absurd to mask the purity and delicate tones of whatever nectar we may be drinking by serving it in obfuscating glasses of green, blue, red, or any other color. For my part I would admit to the gourmet's table only pure and very simply decorated crystal glass.

Decanters play a very limited role on the real gourmet's table; they are used only for such heavy wines as Port and Sherry or for light ordinary Bordeaux. To decant real wines is barbarous; they should be served directly from the bottles in which they have sojourned while their qualities were ripening; in the course of being poured from a bottle into a decanter a wine loses some of its aroma, gets agitated, and often catches cold. If the wine served is not real wine you may decant it and do whatever you please with it except serving it to your guests.

The great difference between an English table and a French table, whether in a private house or in a restaurant, is, so far as the aspect is concerned, the complication of the former and the simplicity of the latter. The French use fewer utensils, and know nothing of that multiplicity of special apparatus-cruet-stands, sardine-boxes, pickle-forks, sauceboxes, butter-coolers, biscuit-boxes, pepper-casters, trowels, toast-racks, claret-jugs - and a score other queer inventions which are the pride of English housekeepers, and which tend to encumber an English table to such a degree that there is hardly room left for the plates. The number of objects that figure on an English table is most confusing. You sit down with the contents of a whole cutlery-shop before you, and in the centre rises a majestic, but not immaculate monument, containing specimens of all the condiments that Cross & Blackwell ever invented. It is an awful spectacle.

In a French house, the articles for table-service are knives, forks, spoons, soup-ladles, salad spoon and fork, a manche a gigot (or handle to screw on to the knuckle-bone of a leg of mutton, so that the carver may hold it while he cuts), a hors d'aenvre service, some bottle-stands, oil and vinegar stands, salt-cellars, pepper-mills, mustard-pots, hot-water dishes, oyster-forks, asparagus servers, ice-pails, nut-crackers, grape-scissors, crumb-brush and tray, a salver or tray, with a sugar-basin, etc., for tea, and there will be an end of the silver articles. With this apparatus, and the necessary supply of plates, dishes, crockery, glass, and linen, the most delicate and complicated repast may be perfectly served.

Nowadays, gold or silver plate is very little used except in a few princely houses. Its absence from the table is not to be regretted; the noise made by the knife and fork coming into contact with gold or silver plate is disagreeable to the nerves; the glare and reflections cast upon the face of the diner by his gold or silver plate are disagreeable to the eyes. The gold or silver ware that figures on modern dining-tables should be limited to candlesticks, dessert-stands, and centre ornaments, if such are used. But in this matter it is preferable to follow the example of our ancestors, and if we are the lucky possessors of fine silver, soupieres by Pierre Germain, or ewers by Froment Meurice or the Fannieres, to exhibit them on our buffet or dresser rather than on the table. Remember that the table should be always free for the needs of the service.

Let the plates and dishes off which we eat be as fine as our purses can afford. One of the great errors made at the Cafe Anglais, in Paris, is to serve fine food on comparatively coarse faience, or plates. A simple cut-let tastes all the better if it is served on a porcelain plate of beautiful form and tasteful ornamentation. A refinement in table-service is to have many sets of porcelain, and to serve each course on dishes and plates of different design; and, above all things, see that the plates are warm - not burning hot, but sufficiently warm not to diminish the heat of the food that is served on them.

The gourmet will prefer the exclusive use of ceramic dishes and plates in serving a dinner, because a metal dish when heated communicates a slight flavor of its own to the natural flavor of the viands. In the Parisian restaurants, even in the best, they have a vile habit of serving a duck, for instance, on a metal dish, and, while the maitre d'hotel cuts up the duck and deposits the pieces on the dish, he has a spirit-lamp burning beneath it. The dish thus becomes hot, the gravy bubbles, the pieces of duck get an extra cooking and absorb the taste of the heated metal, and the result of the whole operation is not roast duck, but oxidized duck. This barbarous operation is practised daily, but only very few diners protest, to such a low level has the art of delicate feasting fallen in the country where it once flourished most brilliantly.

The manner of serving a dinner is a question easily settled, provided we bear in mind the fact that it is desirable to let as little time as possible elapse between the cooking of food and the eating of it. This consideration militates against the service a la Fran-caise, and favors the service a la Russe. In the former system each course is served on the table, and afterwards removed in order to be cut up, while in the latter system the dishes are cut up before being passed round. The service a la Francaise allows a dish to cool on the table before it is served; the service a la Russe is incompatible with the art of decorating and mounting dishes, and suppresses altogether the exterior physiognomy of the French grande cuisine, which is, after all, no great loss. The modern system, dictated by reason and by convenience, is a compromise. The table is decorated simply with fruit, sweetmeats, flowers, and such ornaments as caprice may suggest; the entrees are handed round on small dishes; the important pieces, such as roasts and pieces de resistance, are brought in, each by the maitre d'hotel, presented to the mistress of the house, who makes a sign of acknowledgment, and then taken off to be cut up by the maitre d'hotel on a side table. The carved dish is then handed round by the waiters, and, when all the guests are served, it is placed, if the dish be important enough, on a hot-water stand in front of the host or hostess, or in the same condition on a side table awaiting the needs of the guests. I am speaking always of dinners where the number of the guests is wisely limited; no other dinners can be well served, so that it matters little whether they be served a la Russe or a la Franqaise. By the fusion of the two systems, as above indicated, it is possible to give full and entire satisfaction to the cook, who always has a right to demand that his creations shall be presented for judgment in the most favorable conditions, while, at the same time, the guests have their eyes satisfied by an agreeably arranged table, and their palates respected by being enabled to taste the delicate masterpieces of the cook in all the freshness of their savory succulence.

The inconveniences of our modern system of waiting, where the dishes are presented between the guests and to each one's left, have been noticed already and the remedy indicated, namely, the substitution of narrow tables arranged as convenience may dictate, but with the guests seated on one side only, so that the dishes may be presented to them from the front. If such tables were used, their decoration would necessarily be very simple, and composed mainly of candlesticks and vases for flowers. With our modern tables, at which the guests are seated on all the sides, the simpler the decoration the better. It is essential that the view should not be obstructed, and that opposite neighbors should not have to "dodge" in order to catch a glimpse of each other.

At a feast the guest and his comfort should be first considered, and the guest should never be made the slave of the ornaments and accessories of the table.

All floral decoration, however it may be arranged, should be kept low, no flowers or foliage being allowed to rise to such a height above the table as to interfere with the free view of each guest over the whole table from end to end, and from side to side.

Let the floral decoration be as much as possible without perfume. Nothing is more intolerable to some sensitive natures than an atmosphere impregnated with the odor of violets, roses, or mignonette, particularly during meals.

In future, when the reformed table shall have been introduced, and the custom of sitting on one side only shall have been restored, it will be possible to banish the floral decoration from the table itself, and to place it in the form of a wall of verdure and flowers as a background to the guests. For examples, see the various pictures of feasts by the old Florentine painters already mentioned.

For lighting a dinner-table there remains to my mind but one illumination, namely, candles placed on the table itself in handsome flambeaux, and on the walls in sconces. Gas and electricity are abominations in a dining-room. Any system of lighting which leaves no part of a room in soft shadow is painful to the eye and fatal to the artistic ensemble. For the woman who wishes to show her beauty in the most advantageous conditions, and for the gourmet who wishes to feast his palate and his eyes in the most refined manner possible, a diner aux bougies is the ideal. At the Rothschild houses in Paris the dinners are served by candlelight, and, if the viands and the wines were as fine as the candlesticks, their dinners would be perfect.

In the Baron Edmond de Rothschild's dining-room the air is kept cool in the summer by two columns of crystal ice placed in a bed of flowers and foliage, one at each end of the room, and the floral decoration of the table is composed exclusively of cut orchids.