7//// 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 im merge 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 mind 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 characters more in these nonsensical minutia, than in the most important matters of state; where great men of all nations talk and talk 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 to think of going with my letter to Madame R that night; but, when a man is once dressed at all points for going out, his reflections turn to little account : SO taking down the name of the Hotel de Modène, where I lodged, I walked forth, without any determination where to go;-I shall consider of that, said I, as I walk along. HAIL, ye small sweet courtesies of Pray, Madame, said I, have the turn to go to the Opéra Comique. Most willingly, Monsieur, said she, laying aside her work. I had given a cast with my eye into half a dozen shops as I came along, in search of a face not likely to be disordered by such an interruption; till, at last, this hitting my fancy, I had walked in. She was working a pair of ruffles as she sat in a low chair on the far side of the shop facing the door. Très volontiers, most willingly, said she, laying her work down upon a chair next her, and rising up from the low chair she was sitting in, with so cheerful a movement and so cheerful a look, that, had I been laying out fifty louis d'ors with her, I should have said, "This woman is grateful." You must turn, Monsieur, said she, going with me to the door of the shop, and pointing the way down the street I was to take, you must turn first to your left hand, mais prenez garde, there are two turns; and be so good as to take the second; then go down a little way, and you'll see a church, and when you are past it, give yourself the trouble to turn directly to the right, and that will lead you to the foot of the Pont Neuf, which you must cross; and there any one will do himself the pleasure to show you. She repeated her instructions three times over to me, with the same good-natured patience the third time as the first; and if tones and manners have a meaning, which certainly they have, unless to hearts which shut them out, she seemed really interested that I should not lose myself. I will not suppose it was the woman's beauty, notwithstanding she was the handsomest grisette, I think, I ever saw, which had |