al hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous contrasts in which
he is placed with the caterans and reivers of the hills. In the city of
Glasgow he was looked upon, and justly, as an honour to the gude
town--consulted on all difficult matters, and famous for his knowledge
of the world and his natural sagacity. Would this have been a fit
subject for description? or is it just to think of the respectable
Bailie in the ridiculous point of view in which he is presented to us in
the Highlands? How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long
ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon
him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of
the harem--threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as
he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes
scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from
odd juxtapositions. He knows nothing about caves and prisons and
brigands--but he knows every corner of coffee-houses, and beer-shops,
and ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms give him the command of another set
of characters, totally unknown to the English world of fiction, because
non-existent in England. With us, no shop-boy or apprentice would take
his sweetheart to a public hop at any of the licenced music-houses. No
decent girl would go there, nor even any girl that wished to keep up the
appearance of decency. No flirtations, to end in matrimony, take their
rise between an embryo boot-maker and a barber's daughter, in the course
of the _chaine Anglaise_ beneath the trees of the Green Park, or even at
the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have flinty hearts, and the
above-mentioned barber would probably increase the beauty of his
daughter's "bonny black eye," by giving her another, if she talked of
going to a ball, whether in a room or the open air. The Puritans have
left their mark. Dancing is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual M.C.
But let us follow the barber, or rather hairdresser--for the mere
gleaner of beards is not intended by the name--into his own amusements.
In Paul de Kock he goes to a coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee,
and pockets the entire sugar; or to a ball, where he performs all the
offices of a court chamberlain, and captivates all hearts by his
graceful deportment. His wife, perhaps, goes with him, and flirts in a
very business-like manner with a tobacconist; and his daughter is
whirled about in a waltz by