ay to it, from the dastardly manner in which we attempt
to imitate its airs and ape its vices, goes far to destroy honesty of
intercourse, to make us meanly ashamed of our natural affections and
honest, harmless usages, and so does a great deal more harm than it is
possible it can do good by its example--perhaps, Madam, you speak with
some sort of reason. Potato myself, I can't help seeing that the tulip
yonder has the best place in the garden, and the most sunshine, and the
most water, and the best tending--and not liking him over well. But I
can't help acknowledging that Nature has given him a much finer dress
than ever I can hope to have, and of this, at least, must give him the
benefit.

Or say, we are so many cocks and hens, my dear (sans arriere pensee),
with our crops pretty full, our plumes pretty sleek, decent picking here
and there in the straw-yard, and tolerable snug roosting in the barn:
yonder on the terrace, in the sun, walks Peacock, stretching his proud
neck, squealing every now and then in the most pert fashionable voice
and flaunting his great supercilious dandified tail. Don't let us be too
angry, my dear, with the useless, haughty, insolent creature, because
he despises us. SOMETHING is there about Peacock that we don't possess.
Strain your neck ever so, you can't make it as long or as blue as
his--cock your tail as much as you please, and it will never be half so
fine to look at. But the most absurd, disgusting, contemptible sight
in the world would you and I be, leaving the barn-door for my lady's
flower-garden, forsaking our natural sturdy walk for the peacock's
genteel rickety stride, and adopting the squeak of his voice in the
place of our gallant lusty cock-a-doodle-dooing.

Do you take the allegory? I love to speak in such, and the above
types have been presented to my mind while sitting opposite a gimcrack
coat-of-arms and coronet that are painted in the Invalides Church, and
assigned to one of the Emperor's Generals.

Ventrebleu! Madam, what need have THEY of coats-of-arms and coronets,
and wretched imitations of old exploded aristocratic gewgaws that they
had flung out of the country--with the heads of the owners in them
sometimes, for indeed they were not particular--a score of years before?
What business, forsooth, had they to be meddling with gentility and
aping its ways, who had courage, merit, daring, genius sometimes, and
a pride of their own to support, if proud they were inclined