ed barber and suspected bandit at Leghorn, who had once really
traveled in Persia, and there picked up the knowledge and the ready
money that served his turn, was the perpetrator of this pretty joke and
speculation, as he disappeared from his native city about the time of
the embassy in France, and did not return.

All Europe laughed heartily at the Grand Monarque and his fair
court-dames, and "An Embassy from Persia" was for many years thereafter
an expression similar to "Walker!" in English, or "Buncombe!" in
American conversation, when the party using it seeks to intimate that
the color of his optics is not a distinct pea-green!

IX. RELIGIOUS HUMBUGS.

CHAPTER XLIV.

DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND; OR, YANKEE SUPERSTITIONS.--MATTHIAS THE
IMPOSTOR.--NEW YORK FOLLIES THIRTY YEARS AGO.

There is a story that on a great and solemn public occasion of the
Romish Church, a Pope and a Cardinal were, with long faces, performing
some of the gyrations of the occasion, when, instead of a pious
ejaculation and reply, which were down in the programme, one said to the
other gravely, in Latin "_mundus vult decipi_;" and the other replied,
with equal gravity and learning, "_decipiatur ergo_:" that is, "All the
world chooses to be fooled."--"Let it be fooled then."

This seems, perhaps, a reasonable way for priests to talk about ignorant
Italians. It may seem inapplicable to cool, sharp, school-trained
Protestant Yankees. It is not, however--at least, not entirely.
Intelligent Northerners have, sometimes, superstition enough in them to
make a first-class Popish saint. If it had not been so, I should not
have such an absurd religious humbug to tell of as Robert Matthews,
notorious in our goodly city some thirty years ago as "Matthias, the
Impostor."

In the summer of 1832, there was often seen riding in Broadway, in a
handsome barouche, or promenading on the Battery (usually attended by a
sort of friend or servant,) a tall man, of some forty years of age,
quite thin, with sunken, sharp gray eyes, with long, coarse, brown and
gray hair, parted in the middle and curling on his shoulders, and a long
and coarse but well-tended beard and mustache. These Esau-like
adornments attracted much attention in those close-shaving days. He was
commonly dressed in a fine green frock-coat, lined with white or pink
satin, black or green pantaloons, with polished Wellington boots drawn
on outside, fine cambric ruffles and frill, and a crimson