I have said before, I like to look at 'the
Peoples' on their gala days, they are so picturesquely and outrageously
splendid and happy.
Yonder comes Captain Bull; spick and span, tight and trim; who travels
for four or six months every year of his life; who does not commit
himself by luxury of raiment or insolence of demeanour, but I think is
as great a Snob as any man on board. Bull passes the season in London,
sponging for dinners, and sleeping in a garret near his Club. Abroad,
he has been everywhere; he knows the best wine at every inn in every
capital in Europe; lives with the best English company there; has seen
every palace and picture-gallery from Madrid to Stockholm; speaks
an abominable little jargon of half-a-dozen languages--and knows
nothing--nothing. Bull hunts tufts on the Continent, and is a sort of
amateur courier. He will scrape acquaintance with old Carabas before
they make Ostend; and will remind his lordship that he met him at Vienna
twenty years ago, or gave him a glass of Schnapps up the Righi. We have
said Bull knows nothing: he knows the birth, arms, and pedigree of all
the peerage, has poked his little eyes into every one of the carriages
on board--their panels noted and their crests surveyed; he knows all the
Continental stories of English scandal--how Count Towrowski ran off
with Miss Baggs at Naples--how VERY thick Lady Smigsmag was with young
Cornichon of the French Legation at Florence--the exact amount which
Jack Deuceace won of Bob Greengoose at Baden--what it is that made the
Staggs settle on the Continent: the sum for which the O'Goggarty
estates are mortgaged, &c.
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