trying first one side, then the other; but the German stood square in the most unaccommodating posture that can be imagined—the dwarf might as well have been placed at the bottom of the deepest draw- well in Paris; so he civilly reach’d up his hand to the German’s sleeve, and told him his distress—The German turn’d his back, look’d down upon him as Goliath did upon David—and unfeelingly resumed his posture.

I was just then taking a pinch of snuff out of my monk’s little horn box—And how would thy meek and courteous spirit, my dear monk! so temper’d to bear and forbear!—how sweetly would it have lent an ear to this poor soul’s complaint!

The old French officer, seeing me lift up my eyes with an emotion, as I made the apostrophe, took the liberty to ask me what was the matter—I told him the story in three words; and added how inhuman it was.

By this time, the dwarf was driven to extremes, and in his first transports, which are generally unreasonable, had told the German he would cut off his long queue with his knife—The German look’d back coolly, and told him he was welcome if he could reach it.

An injury sharpened by insult,⁶ be it to who it will, makes every man of sentiment a party: I could have leaped out of the box to have redressed it—The old French officer did it with much less confusion; for leaning a little over and nodding to a centinel, and pointing at the same time with his finger at the distress—the centinel made his way to it—There was no occasion to tell the grievance—the thing told itself; so thrusting back the German instantly with his musket—he took the poor dwarf by the hand, and placed him before him.—This is noble! said I, clapping my hands together—And yet, you would not permit this, said the old officer, in England.

—In England, dear Sir, said I, we sit all at our ease.

The old French officer would have set me at unity with myself, in case I had been at variance,—by saying it was a bon mot—and as a bon mot is always worth something at Paris, he offered me a pinch of snuff.

The Rose

Paris

It was now my turn to ask the old French officer “what was the matter?” for a cry of “Haussez les mains, Monsieur l’Abbé” re-echoed from a dozen different parts of the parterre, was as unintelligible to me, as my apostrophe to the monk had been to him.

He told me, it was some poor Abbé in one of the upper loges, who he supposed had got planted perdu behind a couple of grissets in order to see the opera; and that the parterre espying him, were insisting upon his holding up both his hands during the representation—And can it be supposed, said I, that an ecclesiastick would pick the grissets’ pockets? The old French officer smiled, and whispering in my ear, open’d a door of knowledge which I had no idea of—

Good God! said I, turning pale with astonishment—is it possible, that a people so smit with sentiment should at the same time be so unclean and so unlike themselves—Quelle grossierté! added I.

The French officer told me, it was an illiberal sarcasm at the church, which had begun in the theatre about the time the Tartuffe was given in it, by Moliere—but like other remains of Gothick manners was declining—Every nation, continued he, have their refinements and grossiertés, in which they take the lead and lose it of one another by turns—that he had been in most countries, but never in one where he found not some delicacies, which others seemed to want. Le Pour et le contre se trouvent en chaque nation; there is a balance, said he, of good and bad every where; and nothing but the knowing it is so