"In days not altogether halcyon, I had a venerable great-uncle, a quaint specimen of human infirmity, the singularity of the parish. Though eccentric at times, he was not destitute of good qualities. These, had they been properly applied, might have served to distinguish him among men in what is pedantically called the higher walks of life. But he had a fault, and one that is very unpopular even at this day: he would get vexed at the short-comings of his neighbors, at whom he would level truths exceedingly unpalatable. Indeed, he never failed to put very keen edges on his sayings. Even now, I have the old man in my mind's eye, as in the hey-day of youth my boyish fancy sported with his infirmities. Never shall I forget his slender, stooping figure; his bright bald crown, curtained with locks that pended snowy over his coat collar; his weeping, watchful eye; his tottering mien; his high and furrowed brow, lengthening a sharp, corrugated face; his blunt, warty nose, made more striking by a sunken mouth and the working motion of his lower jaw; and his crutch, for he was a cripple. They left a deep impression on my mind. I speak of him as he was in the dawn of his eightieth summer--when pale blue spots bespread his hands, and his bony fingers he would when excited frisk across the polished crown of his head. His great hobby was his knowledge of diplomacy. And, too, he was forever talking about the affairs of the nation, and would not unfrequently get put out with the whole parish, because it withheld from him, he said, that deference his experience was entitled to. He had, many years ago, been in some way attached to the diplomatic corps, which he ever after regarded with a sort of religious awe; and whenever a strange fit came over him he would do something he said was to prop up its dignity, of which none could be more jealous. I have, known him declare, that to maintain untarnished the character of the polite corps, he would swear by its virtue and his crutch. He would not have it held in suspicion by the vulgar world, and would go straight into a fit of sickness at the news of one its members doing aught to sully the fair name he described it as possessing. Sometimes I thought my great-uncle had been attached to some foreign mission in the mean capacity of butler, or footman, for he was scrupulous of his bow, had an excellent taste for wine, and would spend much valuable time in bringing to light and brushing, and then putting carefully away again, certain velvet inexpressibles of great brightness, and richly embroidered waistcoats, of wonderful length. 'These,' he would say with an air of exultation, 'have a mysterious but mighty influence in changing and directing the affairs of powerful nations.' He had also a boyish fondness for displaying a lithograph of the Countess Hopenpap's family arms, presented, he said, by that august lady to the legation, of which he had the honor of being a member, and from thence stolen by Thomas,