Note (return) — COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE IN ENGLAND.

The degree of luxury in many of these great houses is less remarkable than its completeness. Everything is in keeping, thus presenting a remarkable contrast to most of our rich men's attempts at the same. The dinner, cooked by a cordon bleu of the cuisine3—whose resources in the way of "hot plates" and other accessories for furnishing a superlative dinner are unrivaled—is often served on glittering plate, or china almost equally valuable, by men six feet high, of splendid figure, and dressed with the most scrupulous neatness and cleanliness. Gloves are never worn by servants in first-rate English houses, but they carry a tiny napkin in their hands which they place between their fingers and the plates. Nearly all country gentlemen are hospitable, and it very rarely happens that guests are not staying in the house. A county ball or some other such gathering fills it from garret to cellar.