A bird-stuffer is now a plumassier and taxidermist; and when I asked a waiter the meaning of "Phusitechnicon," which I read over a shop opposite his hotel, he told me it meant old china. And he bowed respectfully, as one who knew how to treat a great scholar, when he met him, as I remarked gravely, "Ah yes, I see: no doubt from _phusi_--the ancients, and _technicon_--cups and saucers." Nor can I leave these long Greek words without noticing another objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in the captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a distinction is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and that which in the latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by the police, becomes in the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible impulse to be gently nursed by the physician. If a poor man steals, he is a desperate thief; but if a rich man fancies that which does not belong to him he is a Kleptomaniac, and "the spoons will be returned." If a poor man is addicted to alcohol he is a drunken sot; but if a rich man is oft intoxicated, he is afflicted with Dipsomania! Interesting patient! I should like to prescribe for him. I feel sure I could do him good with my medicines--the crank and water-gruel! Leaving him at it, I pass on to another mania, which rather provokes amusement than anger--the mania to be called "Esquire." Forty years ago, the title was restricted to those who carried arms. The armiger, no longer toiling after his knight with heavy helmet and shield, bore his own arms, as he drove along, proudly and pleasantly upon his carriage door. People who became rich, and found themselves shut out from "genteel society" because they had only letters upon their spoons, instead of birds and beasts, arms with daggers, and legs with spurs, were delighted to discover, on application at the Heralds' Office, that one of their ancestors had undoubtedly exercised the functions of a groom in the establishment of William the Conqueror, and that they were consequently entitled to bear upon their arms a stable-bucket _azure_, between two horses current, and to wear as their crest a curry-comb in base argent, between two wisps of hay proper, they and their descendants, according to the law of arms. But the luxury was expensive: a lump sum to the Heralds, and two pound two to the King's taxes; and so, as time went on, men of large ambition, but of limited means, began to crave for some more economical process by which they might become esquires. They met together, and they solved the difficulty. They conferred the title upon each other, and they charged no fee. And now the postal authorities will tell you that the number of the "esquires" not carrying arms, not having so much as a leg to stand on (in the matter of legal claims), is something "awful!" But the process is so charmingly cheap and easy that we may expect a further development. Why