PARIS.
When the barber came, he absolutely refused to have any thing to do
with my wig: 'twas either above or below his art: I had nothing
to do but to take one ready made of his own recommendation.
- But I fear, friend! said I, this buckle won't stand. - You may
emerge it, replied he, into the ocean, and it will stand. -
What a great scale is every thing upon in this city thought I. - The
utmost stretch of an English periwig-maker's ideas could have gone
no further than to have "dipped it into a pail of water." - What
difference! 'tis like Time to Eternity!
I confess I do hate all cold conceptions, as I do the puny ideas
which engender them; and am generally so struck with the great
works of nature, that for my own part, if I could help it, I never
would make a comparison less than a mountain at least. All that
can be said against the French sublime, in this instance of it, is
this: - That the grandeur is MORE in the WORD, and LESS in the
THING. No doubt, the ocean fills the mind with vast ideas; but
Paris being so far inland, it was not likely I should run post a
hundred miles out of it, to try the experiment; - the Parisian
barber meant nothing. -
The pail of water standing beside the great deep, makes, certainly,
but a sorry figure in speech; - but, 'twill be said, - it has one
advantage - 'tis in the next room, and the truth of the buckle may
be tried in it, without more ado, in a single moment.
