in armour bright, which shone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather of the east,—all,—all,—tilting it like fascinated knights in tournaments of yore, for fame and love. ...Alas, poor Yorick! cried I, what art thou doing here? On the very first onset of all this glittering clatter, thou art reduced to an atom;-seek-seek some winding alley, with a tourniquet at the end of it, where chariot never rolled, nor flambeau shot its rays; there thou mayest solace thy soul in converse sweet with some kind grisette of a barber's wife, and get into such coteries! -May I perish! if I do, said I, pulling out a letter which I had to present to Madame de R I'll wait upon this lady the very first thing I do. So I called La Fleur to go seek me a barber directly, -and come back and brush my coat. THE WIG PARIS WHEN the barber came, he absolutely refused to have anything to do with my wig; 'twas either above or below his art; I had nothing to do but to take one ready made of his own recommendation. -But I fear, friend, said I, this buckle won't stand..... You may immerge it, replied he, into the ocean, and it will stand. What a great scale is everything upon in this city thought I.-The utmost stretch of an English periwig - maker's ideas could have gone no further than to have "dipped it into a pail of water."What difference! 'tis like time to eternity. I confess I do hate all cold conceptions as I do the puny ideas which engender them; and am generally so struck with the great works of nature that, for my own part, if I could help it, I never would make a comparison less than a mountain at least. All that can be said against the French sublime, in this instance of it, is this:-That the grandeur is more in the word; and less in the thing. No doubt the ocean fills the minds with vast ideas; but Paris being so far inland, it was not likely I should run post a hundred miles out of it to try the experiment: the Parisian barber meant nothing. The pail of water standing beside the great deep makes certainly but a sorry figure in speech;-but 'twill be said, it has one advantage-'tis in the next room, and the truth of the buckle may be tried in it, without more ado, in a single moment. In honest truth, and upon a more candid revision of the matter, the French expression professes more than it performs. I think I can see the precise and distinguishing marks of national character more in these nonsensical minutia than in the most important matters of state; where great men of all nations talk, and stalk so much alike, that I would not give ninepence to choose among them. I was so long in getting from under my barber's hands that it was too late of thinking of going with my letter to Madame R that night: but when points for going out, account; so, taking a man is once dressed at all his reflections turn to little |