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.

In honest truth, and upon a more candid revision of the matter, THE
FRENCH EXPRESSION PROFESSES MORE THAN IT PERFORMS.

I think I can see the precise and distinguishing marks of national
characters more in these nonsensical minutiae than in the most
important matters of state; where great men of all nations talk and
stalk so much alike, that I would not give ninepence to choose