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