mes, are a Chaldee MS. to him. But that the ambassador should invite
him and Mrs. Simpkins, and the three Misses and Master Gregory Simpkins,
to take a bit of dinner in the family-way--should bully the landlord at
the "Aigle," and make a hard bargain with the "Lohn-Kutcher" for him at
the "Sechwan"--should take care that he saw the sights, and wasn't more
laughed at than was absolutely necessary;--all that, is comprehensible,
and John expects it, as naturally as though it was set forth in his
passport, and sworn to by the foreign secretary, before he left London.

Of all the strange anomalies of English character, I don't know one so
thoroughly inexplicable as the mystery by which so really independent
a fellow as John Bull ought to be--and as he, in nineteen cases out
of twenty, is, should be a tuft hunter. The man who would scorn any
pecuniary obligation, who would travel a hundred miles back, on his
journey, to acquit a forgotten debt--who has not a thought that is not
high-souled, lofty, and honourable, will stoop to any thing, to be where
he has no pretension to be--to figure in a society, where he is any
thing but at his ease--unnoticed, save by ridicule. Any one who has much
experience of the Continent, must have been struck by this. There is no
trouble too great, no expense too lavish, no intrigue too difficult, to
obtain an invitation to court, or an embassy _soiree_.

These embassy _soirees_, too, are good things in their way--a kind
of terrestrial _inferno_, where all ranks and conditions of men
enter--stately Prussians, wily Frenchmen, roguish-looking Austrians,
stupid Danes, haughty English, swarthy, mean-looking Spaniards, and here
and there some "eternal swaggerer" from the States, with his hair "_en
Kentuck_," and "a very pretty considerable damned loud smell" of tobacco
about him. Then there are the "_grandes dames_," glittering in diamonds,
and sitting in divan, and the ministers' ladies of every gradation,
from plenipos' wives to _charge d'afaires_, with their _cordons_ of
whiskered _attaches_ about them--maids of honour, _aides-de-camp du
roi_, Poles, _savans_, newspaper editors, and a Turk. Every rank has
its place in the attention of the host: and he poises his civilities,
as though a ray the more, one shade the less, would upset the balance
of nations, and compromise the peace of Europe. In that respect, nothing
ever surpassed the old Dutch embassy, at Dresden, where the _maitre
d'hotel_ had stric