Nothing, besides, is more imposing than the mock eloquence of good French. The language in itself is so adaptive, it is so felicitous, it abounds in such innumerable pleasant little analogies, such nice conceits and suggestive drolleries, that he who acquires these has at will a whole armoury of attack and defence. It actually requires years of habit to accustom us to a display that we come at last to discover implies no brilliancy whatever in him who exhibits, though it argues immense resources in the treasury from which he derives this wealth. I have known scores of delightful talkers--Frenchmen--who had no other charm than what their language lent them. They were neither profound, nor cultivated, nor witty--some were not even shrewd or acute; but all were pleasant--pleasant in the use of a conversational medium, of which the world has not the equal--a language that has its set form of expression for every social eventuality, and that hits to a nicety every contingency of the “salon;” for it is no more the language of natural people than the essence of the perfumer’s shop is the odour of a field flower. It is pre-eminently the medium of people who talk with tall glasses before them, and an incense of truffles around them, and well-dressed women--clever and witty, and not over-scrupulous in their opinions--for their company. Then, French is unapproachable; English would be totally unsuited to the occasion, and German even more so. There is a flavour of sauer kraut about that unhappy tongue that would vulgarise a Queen if she talked it. To attain, therefore, the turns and tricks of this language--for it is a Chinese puzzle in its involvements--what a life must a man have led! What “terms” he must have “put in” at cafés and restaurants! What seasons at small theatres--tripots and worse! What nights at bals-masqués, Chateaux des Fleurs, and Cadrans rouges et bleus! What doubtful company he must have often kept! What company a little more than doubtful occasionally! What iniquities of French romance must he have read, with all the cardinal virtues arrayed as the evil destinies of humanity, and every wickedness paraded as that natural expansion of the heart which alone raises man above the condition of the brute! I ask, if proficiency must imply profligacy, would you not rather find a man break down in his verbs than in his virtue? Would you not prefer a little inaccuracy in his declensions to a total forgetfulness of the decalogue? And, lastly of all, what man of real eminence could have masqueraded--for it is masquerading--for years in this motley, and come out, after all, with even a rag of his identity?