d narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr
Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts
he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great
comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in
the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in
the police-office. The Frenchman, on the other hand, never gets into
mischief from an overdose of _eau sucree_, though sometimes he certainly
becomes very rombustious from a glass or two of _vin ordinaire_; and
nothing astonishes us so much as the small quantities of small drink
which have an effect on the brains of the steadiest of the French
population. They get not altogether drunk, but decidedly very talkative,
and often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small
beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We
constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of
excitement after two rounds of a bottle--jostling the peasants, and
talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when they quarrel, what
a Babel of words, and what a quakerism of hands! Instead of a round or
two between the parties, as it would be in our own pugnacious
disagreements, they merely, when it comes to the worst, push each other
from side to side, and shout lustily for the police; and squalling
women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant
mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and
swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster--but not a single blow!
The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish
into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful _melee_, the
violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily as a
marriage-bell." We don't say, at the present moment, that one of these
methods of conducting a quarrel is better than the other, (though we
confess we are rather partial to a hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on
the claret-cork)--all we mean to advance is, that with the materials to
work upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful describer of real scenes, has a
manifest advantage over the describer of English incidents of a parallel
kind.

The affectations of a French cit, when that nondescript animal
condescends to be affected, are more varied and interesting than those
of their brethren here. He has a taste for the fine arts--he talks about
the opera--likes to know artists