dge. There every new proselyte can meet you. Boast of your
acquaintance with the sanctum, and not one in ten thousand can dispute
it with you. Have you read Monsieur de C--'s pamphlet?"

"Really," said I, "I have been so busy."

"Ah, mon ami!" cried Vincent, "the greatest sign of an idle man is to
complain of being busy. But you have had a loss: the pamphlet is good.
C--, by the way, has an extraordinary, though not an expanded mind; it
is like a citizen's garden near London: a pretty parterre here, and a
Chinese pagoda there; an oak tree in one corner, and a mushroom bed
in the other. You may traverse the whole in a stride; it is the four
quarters of the globe in a mole-hill. Yet every thing is good in its
kind; and is neither without elegance nor design in its arrangement."

"What do you think," said I, "of the Baron de--, the minister of--?"

"Of him!" replied Vincent--

"'His soul Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole.'"

"It is dark and bewildered--full of dim visions of the ancient
regime;--it is a bat hovering about the chambers of an old ruin. Poor,
antique little soul! but I will say nothing more about it,--

"'For who would be satirical Upon a thing so very small' as the soul of
the Baron de ------?"

Finding Lord Vincent so disposed to the biting mood, I immediately
directed his rabies towards Mr. Aberton, for whom I had a most
inexpressible contempt.

"Aberton," said Vincent, in answer to my question, if he knew that
aimable attache--"Yes! a sort of man who, speaking of the English
embassy, says we--who sticks his best cards on his chimney-piece, and
writes himself billets-doux from duchesses. A duodecimo of 'precious
conceits,' bound in calf-skin--I know the man well; does he not dress
decently, Pelham?"

"His clothes are well made," said I; "but no man can dress well with
those hands and feet!"

"Ah!" said Vincent, "I should think he went to the best tailor, and
said, 'give me a collar like Lord So and So's'; one who would not dare
to have a new waistcoat till it had been authoritatively patronized, and
who took his fashions, like his follies, from the best proficients. Such
fellows are always too ashamed of themselves not to be proud of their
clothes--like the Chinese mariners, they burn incense before the
needle!"

"And Mr. Howard de Howard," said I, laughing, "what do you think of
him?"

"What! the thin secretary?" cried Vincent.

"He is the mathematical definition of a stra