Legions of such Englishmen
are patronizing Europe at this moment, being kind to the Pope, or
good-natured to the King of Holland, or condescending to inspect the
Prussian reviews. When Nicholas came here, who reviews a quarter of a
million of pairs of moustaches to his breakfast every morning, we took
him off to Windsor and showed him two whole regiments of six or eight
hundred Britons a-piece, with an air as much as to say,--'There, my boy,
look at THAT. Those are ENGLISHMEN, those are, and your master whenever
you please,' as the nursery song says. The British Snob is long, long
past scepticism, and can afford to laugh quite good-humouredly at those
conceited Yankees, or besotted little Frenchmen, who set up as models of
mankind. THEY forsooth!
I have been led into these remarks by listening to an old fellow at the
Hotel du Nord, at Boulogne, and who is evidently of the Slasher sort. He
came down and seated himself at the breakfast-table, with a surly
scowl on his salmon-coloured bloodshot face, strangling in a tight,
cross-barred cravat; his linen and his appointments so perfectly stiff
and spotless that everybody at once recognized him as a dear countryman.
Only our port-wine and other admirable institutions could have produced
a figure so insolent, so stupid, so gentleman-like. After a while our
attention was called to him by his roaring out, in a voice of plethoric
fury, 'O!'
Everybody turned round at the 'O,' conceiving the Colonel to be, as his
countenance denoted him, in intense pain; but the waiters knew better,
and instead of being alarmed, brought the Colonel the kettle.
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