University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

An arrival—An election—Architecture—A rolling-pin, and
Patriotism of the most approved water.

In due time the coast of Leaplow made its
appearance, close under our larboard bow. So
sudden was our arrival in this novel and extraordinary
country, that we were very near running
on it, before we got a glimpse of its shores. The
seamanship of Captain Poke, however, stood us in
hand; and, by the aid of a very clever pilot, we
were soon safely moored in the harbor of Bivouac.
In this happy land, there was no registration, no
passports, “no nothin”'—as Mr. Poke pointedly
expressed it. The formalities were soon observed,
although I had occasion to remark, how much
easier, after all, it is to get along in this world
with vice than with virtue. A bribe offered to a
custom-house officer was refused; and the only
trouble I had, on the occasion, arose from this
awkward obtrusion of a conscience. However,
the difficulty was overcome, though not quite as
soon or as easily as if douceurs had happened to
be in fashion; and we were permitted to land with
all our necessary effects.

The city of Bivouac presented a singular aspect,
as I first put foot within its hallowed streets.
The houses were all covered with large placards,
which, at first, I took to be lists of the wares to be
vended, for the place is notoriously commercial;
but which, on examination, I soon discovered were
merely electioneering handbills. The reader will
figure to himself my pleasure and surprise, on reading
the first that offered. It ran as follows:—

HORIZONTAL NOMINATION.

Horizontal-Systematic-Endoctrinated-Republicans, Attention!

Your sacred rights are in danger; your dearest liberties are
menaced; your wives and children are on the point of dissolution;
the infamous and unconstitutional position that the
sun gives light by day, and the moon by night, is openly and
impudently propagated, and now is the only occasion that
will probably ever offer to arrest an error so pregnant with
deception and domestic evils. We present to your notice a
suitable defender of all these near and dear interests, in the
person of

JOHN GOLDENCALF,

The known patriot, the approved legislator, the profound philosopher,
the incorruptible statesman. To our adopted fellow-citizens
we need not recommend Mr. Goldencalf, for he is
truly one of themselves; to the native citizens we will only
say, “Try him, and you will be more than satisfied.”

I found this placard of great use, for it gave me
the first information I had yet had of the duty I
was expected to perform in the coming session of
the Great Council; which was merely to demonstrate
that the moon gave light by day, and that
the sun gave light by night. Of course, I immediately
set about, in my own mind, hunting up
the proper arguments by which this grave political

hypothesis was to be properly maintained. The
next placard was in favor of—

NOAH POKE,

The experienced navigator, who will conduct the ship of
state into the haven of prosperity—the practical astronomer,
who knows by frequent observations, that Lunars are not
to be got in the dark.

Perpendiculars, be plumb, and lay your enemies on their
backs!

After this, I fell in with—

THE HONORABLE ROBERT SMUT

Is confidently recommended to all their fellow-citizens by
the nominating committee of the Anti-Approved-Sublimated-Politico-Tangents,
as the real gentleman, a ripe scholar,[1] an
enlightened politician, and a sound democrat.

But I should fill the manuscript with nothing
else, were I to record a tithe of the commendations
and abuse that were heaped on us all, by a community
to whom, as yet, we were absolutely strangers.
A single sample of the latter shall suffice.

I naturally felt a little indignant at this impudent
statement, and was about to call upon the first
passer-by for the address of Mr. Veracious, when
the skirts of my skin were seized by one of the
Horizontal nominating committee, and I was covered
with congratulations on my being happily
elected. Success is an admirable plaster for all
wounds, and I really forgot to have the affair of
the sheep and of the illegitimate children inquired
into; although I still protest, that had fortune been
less propitious, the rascal who promulgated this
calumny would have been made to smart for his
temerity. In less than five minutes it was the turn
of Captain Poke. He, too, was congratulated in
due form; for, as it appeared, the “immigrunt
interest,” as Noah termed it, had actually carried
a candidate on each of the two great opposing
tickets. Thus far, all was well; for, after sharing
his mess so long, I had not the smallest objection
to sit in the Leaplow parliament with the worthy
sealer; but our mutual surprise and, I believe I
might add, indignation, were a good deal excited,
by shortly encountering a walking notice, which
contained a programme of the proceedings to be
observed at the “Reception of the Honorable Robert
Smut.”

It would seem that the Horizontals and the Perpendiculars
had made so many spurious and mistified
ballots, in order to propitiate the Tangents,
and to cheat each other, that this young blackguard
acutally stood at the head of the poll!—a political
phenomenon, as I subsequently discovered, however,
by no means of rare occurrence in the Leaplow
history of the periodical selection of the wisest
and best.

There was certainly an accumulation of interest
on arriving in a strange land, to find oneself both

extolled and vituperated on most of the corners of
its capital, and to be elected to its parliament, all in
the same day. Still, I did not permit myself to be
either so much elated or so much depressed, as
not to have all my eyes about me, in order to
get as correctly as possible, and as quickly as possible,
some insight into the characters, tastes, habits,
wishes and wants of my constituents.

I have already declared that it is my intention
to dwell chiefly on the moral excellencies and
peculiarities of the people of the monikin world.
Still I could not walk through the streets of Bivouac
without observing a few physical usages,
that I shall mention, because they have an evident
connexion with the state of society, and the historical
recollections of this interesting portion of the
polar region.

In the first place, I remarked that all sorts of
quadrupeds are just as much at home in the promenades
of the town, as the inhabitants themselves,
a fact that I make no doubt has some very proper
connexion with that principle of equal rights, on
which the institutions of the country are established.
In the second place, I could not but see that their
dwellings are constructed on the very minimum
of base, propping each other, as emblematic of the
mutual support obtained by the republican system,
and seeking their development in height, for the
want of breadth; a singularity of customs that I
did not hesitate at once to refer to a usage of
living in trees, at an epocha not very remote. In
the third place, I noted, instead of entering their
dwellings near the ground, like men, and indeed
like most other unfledged animals, that they ascend
by means of external steps, to an aperture about
half-way between the roof and the earth, where,
having obtained admission, they go up or down,

within the building, as occasion requires. This
usage, I made no question, was preserved from
the period, and that, too, no distant one, when the
savage condition of the country induced them to
seek protection against the ravages of wild beasts,
by having recourse to ladders, which were drawn
up after the family, into the top of the tree, as the
sun sunk beneath the horizon. These steps or ladders
are generally made of some white material,
in order that they may, even now, be found in the
dark, should the danger be urgent; although I do
not know that Bivouac is a more disorderly or
unsafe town than another, in the present day. But
habits linger in the usages of a people, and are
often found to exist as fashions, long after the motive
of their origin has ceased and been forgotten. As
a proof of this, many of the dwellings of Bivouac
have still enormous iron chevaux-de-frise before
the doors, and near the base of the stone-ladders;
a practice unquestionably taken from the original,
unsophisticated, domestic defences of this wary
and enterprising race. Among a great many of
these chevaux-de-frise, I remarked certain iron
images, that resemble the kings of chess-men,
and which I took, at first, to be symbols of the calculating
qualities of the owners of the mansions, a
species of republican heraldry; but which the Brigadier
told me, on inquiry, were no more than a
fashion that had descended from the custom of
having stuffed images before the doors, in the
early days of the settlement, to frighten away the
beasts at night, precisely as we station scarecrows
in a corn-field. Two of these well-padded
sentinels, with a stick stuck up in a firelock-attitude,
he assured me, had often been known to maintain
a siege of a week, against a she-bear and a
numerous family of hungry cubs, in the olden
times; and, now that the danger was gone, he
presumed the families which had caused these
iron monuments to be erected, had done so to record
some marvellous risks of this nature, from
which their forefathers had escaped by means of
so ingenious an expedient.

Everything in Bivouac bears the impress of the
sublime principle of the institutions. The houses
of the private citizens, for instance, overtop the
roofs of all the public edifices, to show that the
public is merely a servant of the citizen. Even
the churches have this peculiarity, proving that
the road to heaven is not independent of the popular
will. The great Hall of Justice, an edifice of
which the Bivouackers are exceedingly proud, is
constructed in the same recumbent style, the architect,
with a view to protect himself from the
imputation of believing that the firmament was
within reach of his hand, having taken the precaution
to run up a wooden finger-board from the
centre of the building, which points to the place
where, according to the notions of all other people,
the ridge of the roof itself should have been raised.
So very apparent was this peculiarity, Noah observed
that it seemed to him as if the whole
“'arth” had been rolled down by a great political
rolling-pin, by way of giving the country its finishing
touch.

While making these remarks, one drew near at
a brisk trot, who, Mr. Downright observed, eagerly
desired our acquaintance. Surprised at his pretending
to know such a fact without any previous
communication, I took the liberty of asking why
he thought that we were the particular objects of
the other's haste.

“Simply because you are fresh arrivals. This
person is one of a sufficiently numerous class

among us, who, devoured by a small ambition,
seek notoriety—which, by the way, they are
near obtaining in more respects than they probably
desire—by obtruding themselves on every
stranger who touches our shore. Theirs is not a
generous and frank hospitality that would fain
serve others, but an irritable vanity that would
glorify themselves. The liberal and enlightened
monikin is easily to be distinguished from all of
this clique. He is neither ashamed of, nor bigoted
in favor of any usages, simply because they are
domestic. With him the criterions of merit are
propriety, taste, expediency and fitness. He distinguishes,
while these crave; he neither wholly
rejects, nor wholly lives by, imitation, but judges
for himself, and uses his experience as a respectable
and useful guide; while these think that all
they can attain that is beyond the reach of their
neighbors, is, as a matter of course, the sole aim
of life. Strangers they seek, because they have
long since decreed that this country, with its
usages, its people, and all it contains, being founded
on popular rights, is all that is debased and vulgar,
themselves and a few of their own particular
friends excepted; and they are never so happy as
when they are gloating on, and basking in, the
secondary refinements of what we call the `Old
Region.' Their own attainments, however, being
pretty much God-sends, or such as we all pick up
in our daily intercourse, they know nothing of any
foreign country but Leaphigh, whose language we
happen to speak; and, as Leaphigh is also the very
beau idéal of exclusion, in its usages, opinions and
laws, they deem all who come from that part of
the earth, as rather more entitled to their profound
homage than any other strangers.”

Here Judge People's Friend, who had been vigorously

pumping the nominating committee on the
subject of the chances of the little wheel, suddenly
left us, with a sneaking, self-abased air, and with
his nose to the ground, like a dog who has just
caught a fresh scent.

The next time we met the ex-envoy, he was in
mourning for some political backsliding that I
never comprehended. He had submitted to a
fresh amputation of the bob, and had so thoroughly
humbled the seat of reason, that it was not
possible for the most envious and malignant disposition
to fancy he had a particle of brains left.
He had, moreover, caused every hair to be shaved
off his body, which was as naked as the hand,
and altogether he presented an edifying picture
of penitence and self-abasement. I afterwards
understood that this purification was considered
perfectly satisfactory, and that he was thought to
be, again, within the limits of the most Patriotic
Patriots.

In the mean time the Bivouacker had approached
me, and was introduced as Mr. Gilded Wriggle.

“Count Poke de Stunin'tun, my good sir,” said
the Brigadier, who was the master of ceremonies
on this occasion, “and the Mogul Goldencalf—
both noblemen of ancient lineage, admirable privileges,
and of the purest water;—gentlemen, who,
when they are at home, have six dinners daily,
always sleep on diamonds, and whose castles are
none of them less than six leagues in extent.”

“My friend General Downright has taken too
much pains, gentlemen,” interrupted our new acquaintance,
“your rank and extraction being self-evident.
Welcome to Leaplow! I beg you will
make free with my house, my dog, my cat, my
horse, and myself. I particularly beg that your
first, your last, and all the intermediate visits, will

be to me. Well, Mogul, what do you really think
of us? You have now been on shore long enough
to have formed a pretty accurate notion of our
institutions and habits. I beg you will not judge
of all of us by what you see in the streets—”

“It is not my intention, sir.”

“You are cautious, I perceive!—We are in an
awful condition, I confess; trampled on by the
vulgar, and far—very far from being the people
that, I dare say, you expected to see. I couldn't
be made the assistant alderman of my ward, if I
wished it, sir; too much jacobinism—the people
are fools, sir; know nothing, sir; not fit to rule
themselves, much less their betters, sir—here have
a set of us, some hundreds in this very town, been
telling them what fools they are, how unfit they
are to manage their own affairs, and how fast
they are going to the devil, any time these twenty
years, and still we have not yet persuaded them to
intrust one of us with authority! To say the truth,
we are in a most miserable condition; and if anything
could ruin this country, democracy would
have ruined it, just thirty-five years ago.”

Here the wailings of Mr. Wriggle were interrupted
by the wailings of Count Poke de Stunin'tun.
The latter, by gazing in admiration at the
speaker, had inadvertently struck his toe against
one of the forty-three thousand seven hundred and
sixty inequalities of the pavement, (for everything
in Leaplow is exactly equal, except the streets and
highways,) and fallen forward on his nose. I have
already had occasion to allude to the sealer's readiness
in using opprobrious epithets. This contre-tems
happened in the principal street of Bivouac,
or in what is called the Wide-path, an avenue of
more than a league in extent; but, notwithstanding
its great length, Noah took it up at one end and

abused it all the way to the other, with a precision,
fidelity, rapidity and point, that excited general
admiration. “It was the dirtiest, worst paved,
meanest, vilest street he had ever seen, and if they
had it at Stunin'tun, instead of using it as a street
at all, they would fence it up at each end, and turn
it into a hog-lot.” Here Brigadier Downright
betrayed unequivocal signs of alarm. Drawing us
aside, he vehemently demanded of the Captain, if
he were mad, to berate in this unheard-of manner,
the touchstone of Bivouac sentiment, nationality,
taste and elegance! This street was never spoken
of except by the use of superlatives; a usage, by the
way, that Noah himself had by no means neglected.
It was commonly thought to be the longest and
the shortest, the widest and the narrowest, the
best built and the worst built avenue in the universe.
“Whatever you say or do,” he continued,
“whatever you think or believe, never deny the
superlatives of the Wide-path. If asked if you ever
saw a street so crowded, although there be room
to wheel a regiment, swear it is stifling; if required
to name another promenade so free from interruption,
protest by your soul, that the place is a desert!
Say what you will of the institutions of the
country—”

“How!” I exclaimed; “of the sacred rights of
monikins!”

“Bedaub them, and the mass of the monikins,
too, with just as much filth as you please. Indeed,
if you wish to circulate freely in genteel society, I
would advise you to get a pretty free use of the
words `jacobins,' `rabble,' `mob,' `agrarians,'
`canaille,' and `democrats;' for they recommend
many to notice who possess nothing else. In our
happy and independent country, it is a sure sign
of lofty sentiments, a finished education, a regulated

intellect, and a genteel intercourse, to know
how to bespatter all that portion of your fellow-creatures,
for instance, who live in one-story edifices.”

“I find all this very extraordinary, your government
being professedly a government of the mass!”

“You have intuitively discovered the reason—
is it not fashionable to abuse the government everywhere?
Whatever you do, in genteel life, ought
to be based on liberal and elevated principles; and,
therefore, abuse all that is animate in Leaplow, the
present company, with their relatives and quadrupeds,
excepted; but do not raise your blaspheming
tongues against anything that is inanimate! Respect,
I entreat of you, the houses, the trees, the
rivers, the mountains, and, above all, in Bivouac,
respect the Wide-path! We are a people of lively
sensibilities, and are tender of the reputations of
even our stocks and stones. Even the Leaplow
philosophers are all of a mind on this subject.”

“King!”

“Can you account for this very extraordinary
peculiarity, Brigadier?”

“Surely you cannot be ignorant that all which
is property is sacred! We have a great respect
for property, sir, and do not like to hear our wares
underrated. But lay it on the mass so much the
harder, and you will only be thought to be in possession
of a superior and a refined intelligence.”

Here we turned again to Mr. Wriggle, who
was dying to be noticed once more.

“Ah! gentlemen, last from Leaphigh!”—he had
been questioning one of our attendants—“How
comes on that great and consistent people?”

“As usual, sir;—great and consistent.”

“I think, however, we are quite their equals,
eh?—Chips of the same blocks?”

“No, sir,—blocks of the same chips.”

Mr. Wriggle laughed, and appeared pleased
with the compliment; and I wished I had even
laid it on a little thicker.

“Well, Mogul, what are our great forefathers
about? Still pulling to pieces that sublime fabric
of a constitution, which has so long been the wonder
of the world, and my especial admiration?”

“They are talking of changes, sir, although I
believe they have effected no great matter. The
Primate of all Leaphigh, I had occasion to remark,
still has seven joints to his tail.”

“Ah! they are a wonderful people, sir!” said
Wriggle, looking ruefully at his own bob, which,
as I afterwards understood, was a mere natural
abortion. “I detest change, sir; were I a Leaphigher,
I would die in my tail!”

“One for whom Nature has done so much in
this way, is to be excused a little enthusiasm.”

“A most miraculous people, sir—the wonder of
the world—and their institutions are the greatest
prodigy of the times!”

“That is well remarked, Wriggle,” put in the
Brigadier; “for they have been tinkering them,
and altering them, any time these five hundred and
fifty years, and still they remain precisely the
same!”

“Very true, Brigadier, very true—the marvel
of our times! But, gentlemen, what do you indeed
think of us? I shall not let you off with generalities.
You have now been long enough on shore
to have formed some pretty distinct notions about
us, and I confess I should be glad to hear them.
Speak the truth with candor—are we not most
miserable, forlorn, disreputable devils, after all?”

I disclaimed the ability to judge of the social
condition of a people on so short an acquaintance;

but to this Mr. Wriggle would not listen. He insisted
that I must have been particularly disgusted
with the coarseness and want of refinement in the
rabble, as he called the mass, who, by the way,
had already struck me as being relatively much
the better part of the population, so far as I had
seen things!—more than commonly decent, quiet
and civil. Mr. Wriggle, also, very earnestly and
piteously begged I would not judge of the whole
country by such samples as I might happen to fall
in with in the highways.

“I trust, Mogul, you will have charity enough
to believe we are not all of us quite as bad as appearances,
no doubt, make us in your polished
eyes. These rude beings are spoiled by our jacobinical
laws; but we have a class, sir, that is different.
But, if you will not touch on the people,
how do you like the town, sir? A poor place, no
doubt, after your own ancient capitals?”

“Time will remedy all that, Mr. Wriggle.”

“Do you then think we really want time!—
now, that house at the corner, there, to my taste
is fit for a gentleman in any country—eh?”

“No doubt, sir; fit for one.”

“This is but a poor street in the eyes of you
travellers, I know, this Wide-path of ours; though
we think it rather sublime?”

“You do yourself injustice, Mr. Wriggle—
though not equal to many of the—”

“How, sir, the Wide-path not equal to anything
on earth! I know several people who have been
in the old world”—so the Leaplowers call the
region of Leaphigh, Leapup, Leapdown, &c.—
“and they swear there is not as fine a street in
any part of it. I have not had the good fortune
to travel, sir; but, sir, permit me, sir, to say, sir,
that some of them, sir, that have travelled, sir,

think, sir, the Wide-path, sir, the most magnificent
public avenue, sir, that their experienced eyes
ever beheld, sir—yes, sir, that their very experienced
eyes ever beheld, sir.”

“I have seen so little of it, as yet, Mr. Wriggle,
that you will pardon me if I have spoken hastily.”

“Oh! no offence—I despise the monikin who is
not above local vanities and provincial admiration!
You ought to have seen that, sir, for I
frankly admit, sir, that no rabble can be worse
than ours, and that we are all going to the devil,
as fast as ever we can. No, sir, a most miserable
rabble, sir.—But as for this street, and our houses,
and our cats, and our dogs, and certain exceptions—you
understand me, sir—it is quite a different
thing. Pray, Mogul, who is the greatest personage,
now, in your nation?”

“Perhaps I ought to say the Duke of Wellington,
sir.”

“Well, sir, allow me to ask if he lives in a better
house than that before us?—I see you are delighted,
eh! We are a poor, new nation of pitiful
traders, sir, half savage, as everybody knows; but
we do flatter ourselves that we know how to build
a house! Will you just step in and see a new
sofa that its owner bought only yesterday—I know
him intimately, and nothing gives him so much
pleasure as to show his new sofa.”

I declined the invitation on the plea of fatigue,
and by this means got rid of so troublesome an
acquaintance. On leaving me, however, he begged
that I would not fail to make his house my home,
swore terribly at the rabble, and invited me to
admire a very ordinary view that was to be
obtained by looking up the Wide-path in a particular
direction, but which embraced his own abode.
When Mr. Wriggle was fairly out of ear-shot, I

demanded of the Brigadier if Bivouac, or Leaplow,
contained many such prodigies.

“Enough to make themselves very troublesome,
and us ridiculous,” returned Mr. Downright.
“We are a young nation, Sir John, covering a
great surface, with a comparatively small population,
and, as you are aware, separated from the
older parts of the monikin region by a belt of
ocean. In some respects we are like people in the
country, and we possess the merits and failings
of those who are so situated. Perhaps no nation
has a larger share of reflecting and essentially
respectable inhabitants than Leaplow; but, not
satisfied with being what circumstances so admirably
fit them to be, there is a clique among us,
who, influenced by the greater authority of older
nations, pine to be that which neither nature, education,
manners nor facilities will just yet allow
them to become. In short, sir, we have the besetting
sin of a young community—imitation. In our
case the imitation is not always happy, either; it
being necessarily an imitation that is founded on
descriptions. If the evil were limited to mere
social absurdities, it might be laughed at—but
that inherent desire of distinction, which is the
most morbid and irritable, unhappily, in the minds
of those who are the least able to attain anything
more than a very vulgar notoriety, is just as active
here, as it is elsewhere; and some who have got
wealth, and and who can never get more than
what is purely dependent on wealth, affect to despise
those who are not as fortunate as themselves
in this particular. In their longings for pre-eminence,
they turn to other states—Leaphigh more
especially, which is the beau idéal of all nations
and people, who wish to set up a caste in opposition
to despotism—for rules of thought, and declaim

against that very mass which is at the bottom of
all their prosperity, by obstinately refusing to allow
of any essential innovation on the common rights.
In addition to these social pretenders, we have our
political Endoctrinated.”

“Endoctrinated! Will you explain the meaning
of the term?”

“Sir, an Endoctrinated is one of a political
school who holds to the validity of certain theories
which have been made to justify a set of adventitious
facts, as is eminently the case in our own
great model, Leaphigh. We are peculiarly placed
in this country. Here, as a rule, facts—meaning
political and social facts—are greatly in advance
of opinion, simply because the former are left
chiefly to their own free action, and the latter is
necessarily trammelled by habit and prejudice;
while in the `old-region' opinion, as a rule, and
meaning the leading or better opinion, is greatly
in advance of facts, because facts are restrained
by usage and personal interests, and opinion is
incited by study, and the necessity of change.”

“Permit me to say, Brigadier, that I find your
present institutions a remarkable result to follow
such a state of things.”

“They are a cause, rather than a consequence.
Opinion, as a whole, is everywhere on the advance;
and it is further advanced, even here, as a whole,
than anywhere else. Accident has favored the
foundation of the social compact; and once founded,
the facts have been hastening to their consummation
faster than the monikin mind has been able
to keep company with them. This is a remarkable
but true state of the whole region. In other
monikin countries, you see opinion tugging at rooted
practices, and making desperate efforts to eradicate
them from their bed of vested interests, while

here you see facts dragging opinion after them like
a tail wriggling behind a kite.[2] As to our purely
social imitation and social follies, absurd as they
are, they are necessarily confined to a small and an
immaterial class; but the Endoctrinated spirit is a
much more serious affair. That unsettles confidence,
innovates on the right, often innocently and
ignorantly, and causes the vessel of state to sail
like a ship with a drag towing in her wake.”

“This is truly a novel condition for an enlightened
monikin nation!”

“No doubt, men manage better; but of all this
you will learn more in the Great Council. You
may, perhaps, think it strange that our facts
should preserve their ascendency in opposition to
so powerful a foe as opinion; but you will remember
that a great majority of our people, if not absolutely
on a level with circumstances, being purely
practical, are much nearer to this level, than the
class termed the Endoctrinated. The last are troublesome
and delusive, rather than overwhelming.”

“To return to Mr. Wriggle—is his sect numerous?”

“His class flourishes most in the towns. In
Leaplow we are greatly in want of a capital, where
the cultivated, educated, and well-mannered can
assemble, and, placed by their habits and tastes

above the ordinary motives and feelings of the less
instructed, they might form a more healthful, independent,
appropriate, and manly public sentiment
than that which now pervades the country. As
things are, the real élite of this community are so
scattered, as rather to receive an impression from,
than to impart one to society. The Leaplow Wriggles,
as you have just witnessed, are selfish and
exacting as to their personal pretensions, irritably
confident as to the merit of any particular excellence
which limits their own experience, and furiously
proscribing to those whom they fancy less
fortunate than themselves.”

“Good Heavens!—Brigadier—all this is excessively
human!”

“Ah! it is—is it? Well, this is certainly the way
with us monikins. Our Wriggles are ashamed of
exactly that portion of our population of which
they have most reason to be proud, viz. the mass;
and they are proud of precisely that portion of
which they have most reason to be ashamed, viz.
themselves. But plenty of opportunities will offer
to look farther into this; and we will now hasten to
the inn.”

As the Brigadier appeared to chafe under the
subject, I remained silent, following him as fast as
I could, but keeping my eyes open, the reader may
be very sure, as we went along. There was one
peculiarity I could not but remark in this singular
town. It was this:—all the houses were smeared
over with some coloured earth, and then, after all
this pains had been taken to cover the material, an
artist was employed to make white marks around
every separate particle of the fabric, (and they
were in millions,) which ingenious particularity
gives the dwellings a most agreeable air of detail,
imparting to the architecture, in general, a sublimity

that is based on the multiplication table. If to
this be added the black of the chevaux-de-frise, the
white of the entrance-ladders, and a sort of standing-collar
to the whole, immediately under the
eaves, of some very dazzling hue, the effect is not
unlike that of a platoon of drummers, in scarlet
coats, cotton lace, and cuffs and capes of white.
What renders the similitude more striking, is the
fact that no two of the same platoon appear to be
exactly of a size, as is very apt to be the case with
your votaries in military music.