t would be as reasonable to expect a gallant soldier to act as
undertaker, and conduct the funeral of the enemy he has slain.

In a word, Mowbray talked, and consulted, and advised, and squabbled,
with the deaf cook, and a little old man whom he called the butler,
until he at length perceived so little chance of bringing order out of
confusion, or making the least advantageous impression on such obdurate
understandings as he had to deal with, that he fairly committed the
whole matter of the collation, with two or three hearty curses, to the
charge of the officials principally concerned, and proceeded to take the
state of the furniture and apartments under his consideration.

Here he found himself almost equally helpless; for what male wit is
adequate to the thousand little coquetries practised in such
arrangements? how can masculine eyes judge of the degree of _demi-jour_
which is to be admitted into a decorated apartment, or discriminate
where the broad light should be suffered to fall on a tolerable picture,
where it should be excluded, lest the stiff daub of a periwigged
grandsire should become too rigidly prominent? And if men are unfit for
weaving such a fairy web of light and darkness as may best suit
furniture, ornaments, and complexions, how shall they be adequate to the
yet more mysterious office of arranging, while they disarrange, the
various movables in the apartment? so that while all has the air of
negligence and chance, the seats are placed as if they had been
transported by a wish to the spot most suitable for accommodation;
stiffness and confusion are at once avoided, the company are neither
limited to a formal circle of chairs, nor exposed to break their noses
over wandering stools; but the arrangements seem to correspond to what
ought to be the tone of the conversation, easy, without being confused,
and regulated, without being constrained or stiffened.

Then how can a clumsy male wit attempt the arrangement of all the
_chiffonerie_, by which old snuff-boxes, heads of canes, pomander boxes,
lamer beads, and all the trash usually found in the pigeon-holes of the
bureaus of old-fashioned ladies, may be now brought into play, by
throwing them, carelessly grouped with other unconsidered trifles, such
as are to be seen in the windows of a pawnbroker's shop, upon a marble
_encognure_, or a mosaic work-table, thereby turning to advantage the
trash and trinketry, which all the old maids or magpies, who have