ong head. That's all the world,
my dear sir: the long heads and the short horns! Now, I am a short
horn." "I doubt," says he, "that you will not go very far without
getting sheared." I offered to bet with him on that, and he made off,
shaking his head.

But my particular delight was to enlarge on politics and the war. None
damned the French like me; none was more bitter against the Americans.
And when the north-bound mail arrived, crowned with holly, and the
coachman and guard hoarse with shouting victory, I went even so far as
to entertain the company to a bowl of punch, which I compounded myself
with no illiberal hand, and doled out to such sentiments as the
following:--

"Our glorious victory on the Nivelle!" "Lord Wellington, God bless him!
and may victory ever attend upon his arms!" and, "Soult, poor devil! and
may he catch it again to the same tune!"

Never was oratory more applauded to the echo--never any one was more of
the popular man than I. I promise you, we made a night of it. Some of
the company supported each other, with the assistance of boots, to their
respective bed-chambers, while the rest slept on the field of glory
where we had left them; and at the breakfast-table the next morning
there was an extraordinary assemblage of red eyes and shaking fists. I
observed patriotism to burn much lower by daylight. Let no one blame me
for insensibility to the reverses of France! God knows how my heart
raged. How I longed to fall on that herd of swine and knock their heads
together in the moment of their revelry! But you are to consider my own
situation and its necessities; also a certain lightheartedness,
eminently Gallic, which forms a leading trait in my character, and leads
me to throw myself into new circumstances with the spirit of a
schoolboy. It is possible that I sometimes allow this impish humour to
carry me further than good taste approves: and I was certainly punished
for it once.

This was in the episcopal city of Durham. We sat down, a considerable
company, to dinner, most of us fine old vatted English tories of that
class which is often so enthusiastic as to be inarticulate. I took and
held the lead from the beginning; and, the talk having turned on the
French in the Peninsula, I gave them authentic details (on the authority
of a cousin of mine, an ensign) of certain cannibal orgies in Galicia,
in which no less a person than General Caffarelli had taken a part. I
always disliked that commander,