"A mere passing cloud, that can leave no lasting impression on his great
mind," said I; "while this statue will for ever remain, a memorial of his
great deeds; and yet the complaint is general that the statue is
indelicate--as if, forsooth, this was the first statue exhibited in
'puris naturalibus' in England. I really regard it as the senseless
cavilling of envious minds."

"True," said B____, laughing; "there is a great deal of railing about the
figure, but we can all see through it!" at the same time thrusting his
walking-stick through the iron-fence that surrounds the pedestal. As for
delicacy, it is a word that is used so indiscriminately, and has so many
significations, according to the mode, that few people rightly understand
its true meaning. We say, for instance, a delicate child; and
pork-butchers recommend a delicate pig! Delicacy and indelicacy depend
on the mind of the recipient, and is not so much in the object as the
observer, rely on't. Some men have a natural aptitude in discovering the
indelicate, both in words and figures they appear, in a manner, to seek
for it. I assure you that. I (you may laugh if you will) have often
been put to the blush by the repetition of some harmless phrase, dropped
innocently from my lips, and warped by one of these 'delicate' gentlemen
to a meaning the very reverse of what I intended to convey. Like men
with green spectacles, they look upon every object through an artificial
medium, and give it a colour that has no existence in itself!

It was only last week, I was loitering about this very spot, when I
observed, among the crowd of gazers, a dustman dressed in his best, and
his plump doxy, extravagantly bedizened in her holiday clothes, hanging
on his arm.