Now, John Bull has no notion of this--he pays for these people--they figure in the budget, and for a good round sum, too--and what do they do for it? John knows little of the daily work of diplomacy. A treaty, a tariff, a question of war, he can understand; but the red-tapery of office, he can make nothing of. Court gossip, royal marriages--how his Majesty smiled at the French envoy, and only grinned at the Austrian _chargé d’affaires_--how the queen spoke three minutes to the Danish minister’s wife, and only said “_Bon jour, madame_,” to the Neapolitan’s--how plum-pudding figured at the royal table, thus showing that English policy was in the ascendant;---all these signs of the times, are a Chaldee MS. to him. But that the ambassador should invite him and Mrs. Simpkins, and the three Misses and Master Gregory Simpkins, to take a bit of dinner in the family-way--should bully the landlord at the “Aigle,” and make a hard bargain with the “Lohn-Kutcher” for him at the “Sechwan”--should take care that he saw the sights, and wasn’t more laughed at than was absolutely necessary;--all that, is comprehensible, and John expects it, as naturally as though it was set forth in his passport, and sworn to by the foreign secretary, before he left London. Of all the strange anomalies of English character, I don’t know one so thoroughly inexplicable as the mystery by which so really independent a fellow as John Bull ought to be--and as he, in nineteen cases out of twenty, is, should be a tuft hunter. The man who would scorn any pecuniary obligation, who would travel a hundred miles back, on his journey, to acquit a forgotten debt--who has not a thought that is not high-souled, lofty, and honourable, will stoop to any thing, to be where he has no pretension to be--to figure in a society, where he is any thing but at his ease--unnoticed, save by ridicule. Any one who has much experience of the Continent, must have been struck by this. There is no trouble too great, no expense too lavish, no intrigue too difficult, to obtain an invitation to court, or an embassy _soirée_.