A very curious dinner has just taken place in Madrid,
and a private letter gives us a report. We should scarcely venture to meddle with anything so unpretending, but for the thoughts which were uttered there, remarkable alike in their source, and in their assthetical tendency. The eminent banker, M. Salamanca, receives at his table, every Thursday, politicians and journalists of the Moderate party. To this weekly cour- tesy twelve Gacetilleros [journalists] recently responded by inviting their opulent host to an entertainment of their own, at one of the modest restanrantsof the Spanish capital. The invitation was accepted, and the dinner took place, the cost of the feast being eight reels, or one shilling and ninepenee a head. Our correspondent takes up the tale— Instead of the basket of flowers usually placed at the centre of the table stood a pyramid of books' surrounded by the busts of Calderon, Lope de Vega, Cervantes and Velasques. The dinner has been more than modest, and I would never have troubled you with it were it not for Sallinuinca's speech, which I think is worthy to be reproduced—" Gentlemen," said he, about twenty-five years from this time, the old and threadbare cassock of Salamanca, then a student in the University of Grenada, might be among the oldest and the most worn out cassocks of his comrades. Wlien my edu- cation was completed, I proceeded to Malaga and made myself a gacetillero (journalist) of the Avisador Malagneno. Then the love of gold took posses- sion of my son!, and it was Madrid that I found the object of my adoration ; but not without the loss of my juvenile illusion. Believe me, Gentlemen, the man who can satisfy all his wishes has no more enjoyment. Keep the way you have entered on I advise you. Rothschild's celebrity will cease on the day his death. Immortality can be earned, but not bought. Here are before you the busts of men who have gloriously cultivated liberal arts their busts I have met with throughout the whole of Europe ; but nowhere have I found a statue erected in the memory of a man who has devoted his life to making money. Today I speak to you with my feelings of twenty-two years, for in your company I have forgotten I am a banker, and only thought of my youth and days of gay humour."
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