The spirit of adulteration pursues poor John even into his domestic arrangements. Should he design to decorate his dwelling—“his neat suburban cottage”—and have the walls or wainscot of his drawing-room painted a delicate pink colour to rival the carnation tints of the cheek of his “cara sposa,” or those of his breakfast parlour, to imitate the lively blue of the bright eyes of his “lovely cherubs,” the vile sophisticators mar all his wishes, and he is able to obtain nothing else than dull and darkling daubs. In fewer words, he cannot obtain genuine colours wherewith to have his house painted. And this sophistication does not only extend to the common house-paints, (as where white lead is mixed with carbonate or sulphate of barytes; vermilion with red lead, and a long et-cetera;) but should honest John wish that his hopeful progeny may rival the Zeuxis or Apelles of antiquity, or confine his paternal longings to the more modern artists—a Reynolds, a Gainsborough, a Moreland, or a David,—he has the mortification of seeing his fond illusions dissipated by the adulterating manufacturers of ultramarine, carmine, lake, Antwerp blue, crome yellow, Indian ink, and all the other et-ceteras of artist-decoration. The covering of even John’s sconce is not exempt from sophistication. In the room of the dear bought, far fetched beaver, the adulterators adorn John’s pate with a strange combination of wool and the homely and cheaply purchased fur of the rabbit and mole. This, it must be admitted, is cruel usage of the good old gentleman, and must, as the witty author of the Indicator says, bring to his mind an odd association of ideas, (namely, of cheatery and forgiveness,) in one of those communings with his hat’s lining, while, like a polite worshipper, he is whispering his preparatory ejaculations, before he turns round with due gravity and composure, and makes a bow of genteel recognition of the Mr. and Mrs A. and the Misses B. who have assembled in the pew before him. Nor is he better treated by his clothier or man’s mercer. Not to mention the slight texture of the articles, and the substitution of inferior materials for the “_best superfine_ Spanish” and the “_super-extra_ Saxony,” the sly varlet artfully stitches the selvage of broad cloths, kerseymeres, and ladies’ “extra superfine,” dyed of a permanent colour, to the edge of cloth dyed with a fugative or fading dye; and this operation is performed with so much skill and nicety as to elude John’s most penetrating optics.