 which,
my dearest Public, if I do not reckon too much on the continuance of your
favours (though, to say truth, consistency and uniformity of taste are scarce to
be reckoned upon by those who court your good graces), may, perhaps, go far to
make me amends for the loss and damage I have sustained by bringing aunt Dorothy
to the country of thick calves, slender ankles, black mustaches, bodiless limbs
(I assure you the fellow is, as my friend Lord L-- said, a complete giblet-pie,
all legs and wings), and fine sentiments. If she had taken from the half-pay
list a ranting Highlandman, ay, or a dashing son of Erin, I would never have
mentioned the subject; but as the affair has happened, it is scarce possible not
to resent such a gratuitous plundering of her own lawful heirs and executors.
But »be hushed, my dark spirit!« and let us invite our dear Public to a more
pleasing theme to us, a more interesting one to others.
    By dint of drinking acid tiff, as above mentioned, and smoking cigars, in
which I am no novice, my Public are to be informed that I gradually sipp'd and
smoked myself into a certain degree of acquaintance with un homme comme il faut,
one of the few fine old specimens of nobility who are still to be found in
France; who, like mutilated statues of an antiquated and obsolete worship, still
command a certain portion of awe and estimation in the eyes even of those by
whom neither one nor other are voluntarily rendered.
    On visiting the coffee-house of the village, I was, at first, struck with
the singular dignity and gravity of this gentleman's manners, his sedulous
attachment to shoes and stockings, in contempt of half-boots and pantaloons, the
croix de Saint Louis at his button-hole, and a small white cockade in the loop
of his old-fashioned shako. There was something interesting in his whole
appearance; and besides, his gravity among the lively group around him, seemed,
like the shade of a tree in the glare of a sunny landscape, more interesting
from its rarity. I made such advances towards acquaintance as the circumstances
of the place and the manners of the country authorised - that is to say, I drew
near him, smoked my cigar by calm and intermitted puffs, which were scarcely
visible, and asked him those few questions which good breeding everywhere, but
more especially in France, permits strangers to put, without hazarding the
imputation of impertinence. The
