a common hack-reviewer of our own times, who is known to keep in view the quantity rather than the quality of his remarks, and the stipulated price he is to receive per line.  Indeed the parallel would hold good in more respects than that of knowledge, for his language was unusually captious and supercilious, his tone authoritative, and his motive the desire to exhibit his own endowments, rather than the wish he affected to manifest of setting forth the excellences of others.  His speeches were more frequently than ever directed to the Signor Grimaldi, for whom there had suddenly arisen in his mind a still stronger gusto than that he had so liberally manifested, and which had already drawn so much attention to the deportment of this pleasing but modest stranger.  Still he never failed to compel all, within reach of a reasonable exercise of his voice, to listen to his oracles.

“Those that have passed, brother Melchior,” said the bailiff, addressing the Baron de Willading in the fraternal style of the buergerschaft, while his eye was directed to the Genoese, in whom in reality he wished to excite admiration for his readiness in Heathen lore, “are no more than shepherds and shepherdesses of our mountains, and none of your gods and demigods, the former of which are to be known in this ceremony from all others by the fact that they are carried on men’s shoulders, and the latter that they ride on asses, or have other conveniences natural to their wants.  Ah! here we have the higher orders of the mummers in person —­this comely creature is, in reality, Mariette Marron of this country, as strapping a wench as there is in Vaud, and as impudent—­but no matter!  She is now the Priestess of Flora, and I’ll warrant you there is not a horn in all our valleys that will bring a louder echo out of the rocks than this very priestess will raise with her single throat!  That yonder on the throne is Flora herself, represented by a comely young woman, the daughter of a warm citizen here in Vevey, and one able to give her all the equipments she bears, without taxing the abbaye a doit.  I warrant you that every flower about her was culled from their own garden!”

“Thou treatest the poetry of the ceremonies with so little respect, good Peterchen, that the goddess and her train dwindle into little more than vine-dressers and milk-maids beneath thy tongue.”

“Of Heaven’s sake, friend Melchior,” interrupted the amused Genoese, “do not rob us of the advantage of the worthy bailiff’s graphic remarks.  Your Heathen may be well enough in his way, but surely he is none the worse for a few notes and illustrations, that would do credit to a Doctor of Padova.  I entreat you to continue, learned Peter, that we strangers may lose none of the niceties of the exhibition.”