nd!
To necklaced Pug appropriate a chair,
Or sit alone, _knit_, _shepherdise_, and _stare!_
These seek _for fashion_ in a _mourning dress_,
(_Becoming_ mourning makes affliction less.)
With mincing manner, both of ton and town,
Some lead their _Brigand_ children up and down;
Invite attention to small girls and boys,
Dress'd up like dolls, a silly mother's toys;
Or follow'd by their _Bonne, in Norman cap_,
Affect to take their first-born to their lap--
To gaze enraptured, think you, on a face,
In which a husband's lineaments they trace?
Smiling, to win the notice of their elf?
No! but to draw the gaze of crowds on _Self_.
Sunday, which is always in France a _jour de fete_, and a _jour de bal_
into the bargain, is kept at Vichy, and in its neighbourhood, with great
apparent gaiety and enjoyment by the lower orders, who unite their
several _arrondissements_, and congregate here together.
Comes Sunday, long'd for by each smart coquette,
Of Randan, Moulins, Ganat, and Cusset.
In Janus hats,[6] with beaks that point both ways,
Then lively rustics dance their gay _Bourrees_;[7]
With painted sabots strike the noisy ground,
While bagpipes squeal, and hurdy-gurdies sound.
Till sinks the sun--then stop--the poor man's fete
Begins not early, and must end not late.
Whilst Paris belle in costliest silk array'd,
Runs up, and walks in stateliest parade;
Each comely damsel insolently kens;
(So silver pheasants strut 'midst modest hens!)
And marvels much what men _can_ find t' admire,
In such coarse hoydens, clad in such attire!
And now 'tis night; beneath the bright saloon,
All eyes are raised to see the fire balloon,
Till swells the silk 'midst acclamations loud,
And the light lanthorn shoots above the crowd!
Here, 'neath the lines, Hygeia's fount that shade,
Smart booths allure the lounger on parade.
_Bohemia's glass_, and _Nevers' beaded wares_,
_Millecour's fine lace_, and _Moulins' polish'd shears_;
And crates of painted wicker without flaw,
And fine mesh'd products of _Germania's_ straw,
Books of dull trifling, misnamed "reading light,"
And foxy maps, and prints in damaged plight,
Whilst up and down to rattling _castanettes_,
The active hawker sells his "_oubliettes!_"
We have our shows at Vichy, and many an itinerant tent incloses
something worth giving half a franc to see; most of them we had already
seen over and over again.
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