ps in public offices; and there you may see those sons with the
never-failing badge of the low scoundrel-puppy, the gilt chain at the
waistcoat pocket; and there you may hear and see them using the
languishing tones, and employing the airs and graces which wenches use
and employ, who, without being in the family way, wish to make their
keepers believe that they are in the family way. Assuredly great is the
cleverness of your Radicals of '32, in providing for themselves and their
families. Yet, clever as they are, there is one thing they cannot
do--they get governments for themselves, commissionerships for their
brothers, clerkships for their sons, but there is one thing beyond their
craft--they cannot get husbands for their daughters, who, too ugly for
marriage, and with their heads filled with the nonsense they have imbibed
from gentility novels, go over from Socinus to the Pope, becoming sisters
in fusty convents, or having heard a few sermons in Mr. Platitude's
"chapelle," seek for admission at the establishment of mother S . . .,
who, after employing them for a time in various menial offices, and
making them pluck off their eyebrows hair by hair, generally dismisses
them on the plea of sluttishness; whereupon they return to their papas to
eat the bread of the country, with the comfortable prospect of eating it
still in the shape of a pension after their sires are dead. Papa (_ex
uno disce omnes_) living as quietly as he can; not exactly enviably it is
true, being now and then seen to cast an uneasy and furtive glance
behind, even as an animal is wont, who has lost by some mischance a very
sightly appendage; as quietly however as he can, and as dignifiedly, a
great admirer of every genteel thing and genteel personage, the Duke in
particular, whose "Despatches," bound in red morocco, you will find on
his table. A disliker of coarse expressions, and extremes of every kind,
with a perfect horror for revolutions and attempts to revolutionise,
exclaiming now and then, as a shriek escapes from whipped and bleeding
Hungary, a groan from gasping Poland, and a half-stifled curse from
downtrodden but scowling Italy, "Confound the revolutionary canaille, why
can't it be quiet!" in a word, putting one in mind of the parvenu in the
"Walpurgis Nacht." The writer is no admirer of Gothe, but the idea of
that parvenu was certainly a good one. Yes, putting one in mind of the
individual who says--

"Wir waren wahrlich auch nich