reen!

But that's the way with you. You know it is. Don't tell me! You'd go to
see any thing that other people went to see. And don't flatter yourselves
that I am referring to "the vulgar curiosity," as you choose to call it,
when you mean some curiosity in which you don't participate yourselves.
The polite curiosity in this country is as vulgar as any curiosity in the
world.

Of course you'll tell me, no it isn't; but I say, yes it is. What have you
got to say for yourselves about the Nepaulese princes, I should like to
know? Why, there has been more crowding, and pressing, and pushing, and
jostling, and struggling, and striving, in genteel houses this last
season, on account of those Nepaulese princes, than would have taken place
in vulgar Cremorne Gardens and Greenwich Park, at Easter time and
Whitsuntide! And what for? Do you know any thing about 'em? Have you any
idea why they came here? Can you put your finger on their country in the
map? Have you ever asked yourselves a dozen common questions about its
climate, natural history, government, productions, customs, religion,
manners? Not you! Here are a couple of swarthy princes very much out of
their element, walking about in wide muslin trowsers, and sprinkled all
over with gems (like the clockwork figure on the old round platform in the
street, grown-up), and they're fashionable outlandish monsters, and it's a
new excitement for you to get a stare at 'em. As to asking 'em to dinner,
and seeing 'em sit at table without eating in your company (unclean
animals as you are!), you fall into raptures at that. Quite delicious,
isn't it? Ugh, you dunder-headed boobies!

I wonder what there is, new and strange, that you _wouldn't_ lionize, as
you call it. Can you suggest any thing! It's not a hippopotamus, I
suppose. I hear from my brother-in-law in the Zoological Gardens, that you
are always pelting away into the Regent's Park, by thousands, to see the
hippopotamus. Oh, you're very fond of hippopotami, ain't you? You study
one attentively, when you _do_ see one, don't you? You come away so much
wiser than when you went, reflecting so profoundly on the wonders of the
creation--eh?

Bah! You follow one another like wild geese; but you are not so good to
eat!

These, however, are not the observations of my friend the Horse. _He_
takes you, in another point of view. Would you like to read his
contribution to my Natural History of you? No? You shall then.

He is a cab-ho