stirring hints of an invention he claimed: the discovery of a Balance in
Breeches: apparently the philosopher's stone of the tailor craft, a
secret that should ensure harmony of outline to the person and an
indubitable accommodation to the most difficult legs.

Since Adam's expulsion, it seemed, the tailors of this wilderness had
been in search of it. But like the doctors of this wilderness, their
science knew no specific: like the Babylonian workmen smitten with
confusion of tongues, they had but one word in common, and that word was
'cut.' Mr. Goren contended that to cut was not the key of the science:
but to find a Balance was. An artistic admirer of the frame of man, Mr.
Goren was not wanting in veneration for the individual who had arisen to
do it justice. He spoke of his Balance with supreme self-appreciation.
Nor less so the Honourable Melville, who professed to have discovered the
Balance of Power, at home and abroad. It was a capital Balance, but
inferior to Mr. Goren's. The latter gentleman guaranteed a Balance with
motion: whereas one step not only upset the Honourable Melville's, but
shattered the limbs of Europe. Let us admit, that it is easier to fit a
man's legs than to compress expansive empires.

Evan enjoyed the doctoring of kingdoms quite as well as the diplomatist.
It suited the latent grandeur of soul inherited by him from the great
Mel. He liked to prop Austria and arrest the Czar, and keep a watchful
eye on France; but the Honourable Melville's deep-mouthed phrase conjured
up to him a pair of colossal legs imperiously demanding their Balance
likewise. At first the image scared him. In time he was enabled to
smile it into phantom vagueness. The diplomatist diplomatically informed
him, it might happen that the labours he had undertaken might be neither
more nor less than education for a profession he might have to follow.
Out of this, an ardent imagination, with the Countess de Saldar for an