expedient to brave the dangers of sea and land, and, unscrewing their
brass spurs, folding up their mustachios in a _port-feuille_, they
hasten them from life and love, and London, and set them down at
Meurice's, the creatures of another element; not less new to all things
around them, than all things there are new to them. It was not long since
I met one at the _table-d'hote_ of Mr. Money, the hospitable but
expensive owner of Les Trois Couronnes, at Vevay, in Switzerland. A large
party had assembled, composed of almost every European nation; and we had
just commenced our dinner, when we were intruded upon by an Exquisite--a
creature something between the human species and a man-milliner--a seven
months' child of fashion--one who had been left an orphan by manliness and
taste, and no longer remembered his lost parents. Never can I forget the
stare of Baron Pougens, (a Swiss by birth, but a Russian noble) as this
specimen of elegance, with mincing step and gait, moved onward, something
like a new member tripping it to the table to take his oaths. How he had
got so far from Grange's, I really cannot say; but he had the policy of
assurance in his favour; and in his own idea, at the least, was what I
heard a poor devil of a candle-snuffer once denominate George Frederic
Cooke, the tragedian,--"a rare specimen of exalted humanity;" and the
actor was certainly in a rare spirit of exaltation at the moment. His
delicate frame was enveloped by a dandy harness, so admirably ordered and
adjusted, that he moved in fear of involving his Stultz in the danger of a
plait; his kid-clad fingers scarcely supported the weight of his
yellow-lined Leghorn; all that was man about him, was in his spurs and
mustachios; and, even with them, he seemed there a moth exposed to an
Alpine blast,--some mamma's darling, injudiciously and cruelly abandoned
to the risk of cold, in a land where Savory and Moore were yet unheard of,
"Beppo in London" wholly unknown, Hoby unesteemed, Gunter misprized, and
where George Brummell had never, never trod. After having bestowed a wild
inexpressive stare at the cannibals assembled, male and