his body, and by the time he has arrived at Roslin, he will be a dead
man. If that man prospers in the world, he commits suicide the moment he
sets up his carriage.

We go to a ball. Mercy upon us! is this what you call dancing? A man of
thirty years of age, and with legs as thick as a gate-post, stands up in
the middle of the room, and gapes, and fumbles with his gloves, looking
all the time as if he were burying his grandmother. At a given signal,
the unwieldy animal puts himself in motion; he throws out his arms,
crouches up his shoulders, and, without moving a muscle of his face,
kicks out his legs, to the manifest risk of the bystanders, and goes
back to the place puffing and blowing like an otter, after a half-hour's
burst. Is this dancing? Shades of the filial and paternal Vestris! can
this be a specimen of the art which gives elasticity to the most inert
confirmation, which sets the blood glowing with a warm and genial flow,
and makes beauty float before our ravished senses, stealing our
admiration by the gracefulness of each new motion, till at last our
souls thrill to each warning movement, and dissolve into ecstasy and
love?

People seem even to labour to be awkward. One would think a gentleman
might shake hands with a familiar friend without any symptoms of
cubbishness. Not at all. The hand is jerked out by the one with the
velocity of a rocket, and comes so unexpectedly to the length of its
tether, that it nearly dislocates the shoulder bone. There it stands
swaying and clutching at the wind, at the full extent of the arm, while
the other is half poked out, and half drawn in, as if rheumatism
detained the upper moiety and only below the elbow were at liberty to
move. After you have shaken the hand, (but for what reason you squeeze
it, as if it were a sponge, I can by no means imagine,) can you not