tite for its reception among the vulgar. Here he continued his
exhibition, now moralizing in the quaint and often in the pithy manner,
which renders the southern buffoon so much superior to his duller
competitor of the north, and uttering a wild jumble of wholesome truths,
loose morality, and witty inuendoes, the latter of which never failed to
extort roars of laughter from all but those who happened to be their
luckless subjects.

Once or twice Baptiste raised his head, and stared about him with drowsy
eyes, but, satisfied there was nothing to be done in the way of forcing
the vessel ahead, he resumed his nap, without interfering in the pastime
of those whom he had hitherto seemed to take pleasure in annoying. Left
entirely to themselves, therefore, the crowd on the forecastle represented
one of those every-day but profitable pictures of life, which abound under
our eyes, but which, though they are pregnant with instruction, are
treated with the indifference that would seem to be the inevitable
consequence of familiarity.

The crowded and overloaded bark might have been compared to the vessel of
human life, which floats at all times subject to the thousand accidents of
a delicate and complicated machinery: the lake, so smooth and alluring in
its present tranquillity, but so capable of lashing its iron-bound coasts
with fury, to a treacherous world, whose smile is almost always as
dangerous as its frown; and, to complete the picture, the idle, laughing,
thoughtless, and yet inflammable group that surrounded the buffoon, to the
unaccountable medley of human sympathies, of sudden and fierce passions,
of fun and frolic, so inexplicably mingled with the grossest egotism that
enters into the heart of man: in a word, to so much that is beautiful and
divine, with so much that would seem to be derived directly from the
demons, a compound which composes this mysterious and dread state of
being, and which we are taught, by reason and revelation, is only a
preparation for another still more incomprehensible and wonderful.

Chapter V.

"How like a fawning publican he looks!"

Shylock.

The change of the juggler's scene of action left the party in the stern of
the barge, in quiet possession of their portion of the vessel. Baptiste
and his boatmen still slept among the boxes; Maso continued to pace his
elevated platform above their heads; and the meek-looking stranger, whose
entrance into the barge had drawn so ma