THE WIG. PARIS.
Back 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.
In honest truth, and upon a more candid revision of the matter, THE
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