bald crown, curtained with locks that
pended snowy over his coat collar; his weeping, watchful eye; his
tottering mien; his high and furrowed brow, lengthening a sharp,
corrugated face; his blunt, warty nose, made more striking by a sunken
mouth and the working motion of his lower jaw; and his crutch, for he
was a cripple. They left a deep impression on my mind. I speak of him
as he was in the dawn of his eightieth summer--when pale blue spots
bespread his hands, and his bony fingers he would when excited frisk
across the polished crown of his head. His great hobby was his
knowledge of diplomacy. And, too, he was forever talking about the
affairs of the nation, and would not unfrequently get put out with the
whole parish, because it withheld from him, he said, that deference
his experience was entitled to. He had, many years ago, been in some
way attached to the diplomatic corps, which he ever after regarded
with a sort of religious awe; and whenever a strange fit came over him
he would do something he said was to prop up its dignity, of which
none could be more jealous. I have, known him declare, that to
maintain untarnished the character of the polite corps, he would swear
by its virtue and his crutch. He would not have it held in suspicion
by the vulgar world, and would go straight into a fit of sickness at
the news of one its members doing aught to sully the fair name he
described it as possessing. Sometimes I thought my great-uncle had
been attached to some foreign mission in the mean capacity of butler,
or footman, for he was scrupulous of his bow, had an excellent taste
for wine, and would spend much valuable time in bringing to light and
brushing, and then putting carefully away again, certain velvet
inexpressibles of great brightness, and richly embroidered waistcoats,
of wonderful length. 'These,' he would say with an air of exultation,
'have a mysterious but mighty influence in changing and directing the
affairs of powerful nations.' He had also a boyish fondness for
displaying a lithograph of the Countess Hopenpap's family arms,
presented, he said, by that august lady to the legation, of which he
had the honor of being a member, and from thence stolen by Thomas,
footman in ordinary to the establishment. For this heinous offence,
Thomas, though his knowledge of etiquette was invaluable to the
mission (the gentlemen up stairs always fashioned their bows after
his!), was discharged, having been detected in the a