sian or
Kuzzilbash caps, Middle-age caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps
of maintenance), Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps. Fancy all
the jackets you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen
can describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen.

In this company and costume the French student of art passes his days
and acquires knowledge; how he passes his evenings, at what theatres, at
what guinguettes, in company with what seducing little milliner,
there is no need to say; but I knew one who pawned his coat to go to a
carnival ball, and walked abroad very cheerfully in his blouse for six
weeks, until he could redeem the absent garment.

These young men (together with the students of sciences) comport
themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German bursch
towards the philister, or as the military man, during the empire, did
to the pekin:--from the height of their poverty they look down upon
him with the greatest imaginable scorn--a scorn, I think, by which the
citizen seems dazzled, for his respect for the arts is intense. The case
is very different in England, where a grocer's daughter would think she
made a misalliance by marrying a painter, and where a literary man (in
spite of all we can say against it) ranks below that class of gentry
composed of the apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose
positions, in country towns at least, are so equivocal. As, for
instance, my friend the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an undeniable
pedigree, a paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in
Warwickshire, in company with several squires and parsons of that
enlightened county. Asterisk, as usual, made himself extraordinarily
agreeable at dinner, and delighted all present with his learning and
wit. "Who is that monstrous pleasant fellow?" said one of the squires.
"Don't you know?" replied another. "It's Asterisk, the author of
so-and-so, and a famous contributor to such and such a magazine." "Good
heavens!" said the squire, quite horrified! "a literary man! I thought
he had been a gentleman!"

Another instance: M. Guizot, when he was Minister here, had the grand
hotel of the Ministry, and gave entertainments to all the great de par
le monde, as Brantome says, and entertained them in a proper ministerial
magnificence. The splendid and beautiful Duchess of Dash was at one of
his ministerial parties; and went, a fortnight afterwards, as in duty
bound, to pay her