Highlands?  How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of the harem—­threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes scarcely more enormous?  Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from odd juxtapositions.  He knows nothing about caves and prisons and brigands—­but he knows every corner of coffee-houses, and beer-shops, and ball-rooms.  And these ball-rooms give him the command of another set of characters, totally unknown to the English world of fiction, because non-existent in England.  With us, no shop-boy or apprentice would take his sweetheart to a public hop at any of the licenced music-houses.  No decent girl would go there, nor even any girl that wished to keep up the appearance of decency.  No flirtations, to end in matrimony, take their rise between an embryo boot-maker and a barber’s daughter, in the course of the chaine Anglaise beneath the trees of the Green Park, or even at the Yorkshire Stingo.  Fathers have flinty hearts, and the above-mentioned barber would probably increase the beauty of his daughter’s “bonny black eye,” by giving her another, if she talked of going to a ball, whether in a room or the open air.  The Puritans have left their mark.  Dancing is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual M.C.  But let us follow the barber, or rather hairdresser—­for the mere gleaner of beards is not intended by the name—­into his own amusements.  In Paul de Kock he goes to a coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee, and pockets the entire sugar; or to a ball, where he performs all the offices of a court chamberlain, and captivates all hearts by his graceful deportment.  His wife, perhaps, goes with him, and flirts in a very business-like manner with a tobacconist; and his daughter is whirled about in a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the young confectioner, with as much elegance and decorum as if they were a young marquis and his bride in the dancing hall at Devonshire House.  Our English friend goes to enjoy a pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a cigar, and gin and water, at the neighbouring inn.  Or when he determines on having a night of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the order of the evening.  A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has a bumper.  He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats himself at the instrument.  The stout man sings, the young man plays, and thunders of applause, and various fresh orders for kidneys and strong ale, and welch rabbits and cold-without, reward