eye to the main chance. He brings a bunch
of radishes with him for cheapness, and gives a band of musicians at the
door a penny, observing that he likes their performance better than
all the Opera squalling. This brings the severity of his political
principles into question, if not into contempt. He would abolish the
National Debt from motives of personal economy, and objects to Mr.
Canning's pension because it perhaps takes a farthing a year out of his
own pocket. A great deal of radical reasoning has its source in this
feeling.--He bestows no small quantity of his tediousness upon Mounsey,
on whose mind all these formulas and diagrams fall like seed on stony
ground: 'while the manna is descending,' he shakes his ears, and, in the
intervals of the debate, insinuates an objection, and calls for another
half-pint. I have sometimes said to him, 'Any one to come in here
without knowing you, would take you for the most disputatious man alive,
for you are always engaged in an argument with somebody or other.'
The truth is, that Mounsey is a good-natured, gentlemanly man, who
notwithstanding, if appealed to, will not let an absurd or unjust
proposition pass without expressing his dissent; and therefore he is a
sort of mark for all those (and we have several of that stamp) who like
to tease other people's understandings as wool-combers tease wool. He
is certainly the flower of the flock. He is the oldest frequenter of the
place, the latest sitter-up, well-informed, inobtrusive, and that
sturdy old English character, a lover of truth and justice. I never knew
Mounsey approve of anything unfair or illiberal. There is a candour and
uprightness about his mind which can neither be wheedled nor browbeat
into unjustifiable complaisance. He looks straight forward as he sits
with his glass in his hand, turning neither to the right nor the left,
and I will venture to say that he has never had a sinister object in
view through life. Mrs. Battle (it is recorded in her Opinions on Whist)
could not make up her mind to use the word _'Go.'_ Mounsey, from long
practice, has got over this difficulty, and uses it incessantly. It
is no matter what adjunct follows in the train of this despised
monosyllable,--whatever liquid comes after this prefix is welcome.
Mounsey, without being the most communicative, is the most conversible
man I know. The social principle is inseparable from his person. If he
has nothing to say, he drinks your health; and when