_Carshalton_.
[2] "Which, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length
along"--POPE.
[3] It is, indeed, difficult to avoid one, call it what you
will, and quite as difficult to find a more absurd name than
that adopted, unless, indeed, (why the machine goes but five
miles an hour,) it is called a diligence from not being
diligent, as the speaker of our House of Commons may be so
designated from not speaking. It consists of three bodies,
carries eighteen inside, and is not unfrequently drawn by nine
horses. A cavalry charge, therefore, could scarcely make more
noise. Hence, and from the other circumstance, its association
in the second stanza with the triune sonorous Cerberus. A
diligence indeed!
[4] The intrusive garrulity of French waiters at dinner is
notorious.
[5] This "sea Mediterranean" is a most filthy, fetid, uncovered
gutter, running down the middle of the most, even of the best
streets, and with which every merciless Jehu most liberally
bespatters the unhappy pedestrian. Truly _la belle nation_ has
little idea of decency, or there would be subterranean sewers
like ours.
[6] French houses are cleaner even than ours externally, being
all neatly whitewashed! _mais le dedans! le dedans!_
[7] The servants are as notorious for their incivility as for
their intrusive loquacity.
[8] As Scott well observes in the introduction to Waverley, "the
word comfortable is peculiar to the English language." The thing
is certainly peculiar to us, if the word is not.
[9] All the tragedies are in rhyme, and that of the very worst
description for elocutionary effect. It is the anapestic, like,
as Hannah More remarks, "A cobbler there was, and he lived in a
stall!"
[10] It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the absurdity
(exploded in England at the Reformation) of a Latin liturgy
still obtains in France.
[11] The Palais Royal! that pandemonium of profligacy! whose
gaming tables have eternally ruined so many of our countrymen!
So many, that he who, unwarned by their sad experience, plays at
them, is--is he not?--"complete ass."
[12] There are none, even in the leading streets; our
ambassador's, for instance.
[13] As the _Etoile_ lately translated John Bull. "When John's
no longer chamber-maid." Of the _propria quae maribus_ of French
domestic economy, this is not the least amusing feature. At my
hotel (in Rue St. Honoré) there was a he bed-maker; and I do
believe the anomalous animal is not uncommon.
"When printed well a book is."
Both paper and types are very inferior to ours. But that I
respect the editor's modesty, I would say it were not easy to
find a periodical in Paris, at once so handsomely and
economically got up as--this MIRROR.
* * * * *