I remember a very honest gentleman, who understood little or nothing of French; but having picked up a few phrases, he brought them forward on every occasion, and affected, among his neighbours in the country, the most perfect knowledge, and highest admiration, of that language. When any body, in compliance with his taste, uttered a sentence in that tongue, though my good friend did not understand a syllable of it, yet he never failed to nod and smile to the speaker with the most knowing air imaginable. The parson of the parish, at a country dinner, once addressed him in these emphatic words: _Monsieur, je trouve ce plum-pudding extrémement bon!_ which happening not to be in my friend’s collection of phrases, he did not comprehend. He nodded and smiled to the clergyman, however, in his usual intelligent manner; but a person who sat near him, being struck with the sagacious and important tone in which the observation had been delivered, begged of my friend to explain it in English:—on which, after some hesitation, he declared, that the turn of the expression was so genteel, and so exquisitely adapted to the French idiom, that it could not be rendered into English, without losing a great deal of the original beauty of the sentiment. At the comic opera I have sometimes seen action alone excite the highest applause, independent of either the poetry or the music. I saw a Duo performed by an old man and a young woman, supposed to be his daughter, in such an humorous manner, as drew an universal _encora_ from the spectators. The merit of the musical part of the composition, I was told, was but very moderate, and as for the sentiment you shall judge.