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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 or 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 the 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 any thing 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
emerge it, replied he, into the ocean, and it will stand. -

What a great scale is every thing 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 minutiae 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
amongst 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 Modene, where I lodged, I walked forth without any

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