Even in the simple article of diplomatic dress we see the same feature peeping out.  Vanity may be discovered as readily in singularity, however simple, as in the naked savage who struts about as proud as a peacock, with no covering but a gold-laced cocked hat on his head and a brass-mounted sword at his side.  When civilized society agrees upon some distinctive uniform for diplomatic service, who can fail to observe the lurking vanity that dictated the abolition of it by the Republic?—­not to mention the absurdity of wearing a sword in plain clothes.  The only parallel it has among bipeds, that I know of, is a master-at-arms on board a ship, with a cane by his side; but then he carries a weapon which he is supposed to use.  The Minister of the Republic carries a weapon for ornament only.  In quadruped life, it reminds me of a poodle closely shaved all over, except a little tuft at the end of his tail, the sword and the tuft recalling to mind the fact that the respective possessors have been shorn of something.

Firmly convinced, from my earliest schoolboy days, of the intimate connexion which exists between boasting and bullying, I had long blushed to feel how pre-eminent my own country was in the ignoble practice; but a more intimate acquaintance with the United States has thoroughly satisfied me that that pre-eminence justly belongs to the great Republic.  But it is not merely in national matters that this feeling exhibits itself; you observe it in ordinary life as well, by the intense love shown for titles; nobody is contented until he obtain some rank.  I am aware this is a feature inseparable from democracy.  Everybody you meet is Captain, Colonel, General, Honourable, Judge, or something; and if they cannot obtain it legitimately, they obtain it by courtesy, or sometimes facetiously, like a gentleman I have before alluded to, who obtained the rank of judge because he was a connoisseur in wine.  In these, and a thousand other ways, the love of vanity stands nationally revealed.

I do not think Americans are aware what injustice they do themselves by this love of high-sounding titles.[CL] For instance, in a paper before me, I see a Deputy Sheriff calling on the mob to resist the law; I see Governor Bigler authorizing General King to call out the military, one naturally supposes to keep order; but observe he calls Mr. Walker, of Erie, a traitor and a scoundrel; of the directors and managers of the railroad, he says, “We will whip them, will whip them, will bury them so deep electricity can’t reach them—­we will whip them—­we will whip the g—­ts out of them!” &c.—­Now, judging of these people by their titles, as recognised by the rest of the civilized world, what a disgrace to the higher classes of Americans is the foregoing!  But anybody who really knows the title system of the Republic will at once see that the orator was a mere rowdy.  Thus they suffer for their vanity.  It pervades every class of the whole community, from the rowdy, who talks of “whipping creation,” to the pulpit orator, who often heralds forth past success to feed the insatiable appetite:  in short, it has become a national disease; and were it not for the safety-valve formed by the unmeasured terms of mutual vituperation they heap upon each other on occasions of domestic squabbles, their fate would assuredly be that of the frog in the fable.