But the glass of wine—­can anything be more easy?  One would think not—­but if you take notice next time you empty a gallon with a friend, you will see that, sixteen to one, he makes the most convulsive efforts to do with ease what a person would naturally suppose was the easiest thing in the world.  Do you see, in the first place, how hard he grasps the decanter, leaving the misty marks of five hot fingers on the glittering crystal, which ought to be pure as Cornelia’s fame?  Then remark at what an acute angle he holds his right elbow as if he were meditating an assault on his neighbour’s ribs; then see how he claps the bottle down again as if his object were to shake the pure ichor, and make it muddy as his own brains.  Mark how the animal seizes his glass,—­by heavens he will break it into a thousand fragments!  See how he bows his lubberly head to meet half way the glorious cargo; how he slobbers the beverage over his unmeaning gullet, and chucks down the glass so as almost to break its stem after he has emptied it of its contents as if they had been jalap or castor-oil!  Call you that taking a glass of wine?  Sir, it is putting wine into your gullet as you would put small beer into a barrel,—­but it is not—­oh, no! it is not taking, so as to enjoy, a glass of red, rich port, or glowing, warm, tinted, beautiful caveza!

A newly married couple are invited to a wedding dinner.  Though the lady, perhaps, has run off with a person below her in rank and station, see when they enter the room, how differently they behave.—­How gracefully she waves her head in the fine recover from the withdrawing curtsy, and beautifully extends her hand to the bald-pated individual grinning to her on the rug!  While the poor spoon, her husband, looks on, with the white of his eyes turned up as if he were sea-sick, and his hands dangle dangle on his thighs as if he were trying to lift his own legs.  See how he ducks to the lady of the house, and simpers across the fire-place to his wife, who, by this time is giving a most spirited account of the state of the roads, and the civility of the postilions near the Borders.

Is a man little?  Let him always, if possible, stoop.  We are sometimes tempted to lay sprawling in the mud fellows of from five feet to five feet eight, who carry the back of their heads on the extreme summit of their back-bone, and gape up to heaven as if they scorned the very ground.  Let no little man wear iron heels.  When we visit a friend of ours in Queen-street we are disturbed from our labours or conversation by a sound which resembles the well-timed marching of a file of infantry or a troop of dismounted dragoons.  We hobble as fast as possible to the window, and are sure to see some chappie of about five feet high stumping on the pavement with his most properly named cuddy-heels; and we stake our credit, we never yet heard a similar clatter from any of his majesty’s subjects of a rational and gentlemanly height—­We mean from five feet eleven (our own height) up to six feet three.