He is not fit to make dance a bear!” Ask Paddington and Buckminster, those two “swells” of fashion, what they think of each other?  They are notorious ordinaire.  You and I remember when they passed for very small wine, and now how high and mighty they have become.  What do you say to Tomkins’s sermons?  Ordinaire, trying to go down as orthodox port, and very meagre ordinaire too!  To Hopkins’s historical works?—­to Pumkins’s poetry?  Ordinaire, ordinaire again—­thin, feeble, overrated; and so down the whole list.  And when we have done discussing our men friends, have we not all the women?  Do these not advance absurd pretensions?  Do these never give themselves airs?  With feeble brains, don’t they often set up to be esprits forts?  Don’t they pretend to be women of fashion, and cut their betters?  Don’t they try and pass off their ordinary-looking girls as beauties of the first order?  Every man in his circle knows women who give themselves airs, and to whom we can apply the port-wine simile.

Come, my friends.  Here is enough of ordinaire and port for to-day.  My bottle has run out.  Will anybody have any more?  Let us go up stairs, and get a cup of tea from the ladies.

OGRES.

I dare say the reader has remarked that the upright and independent vowel, which stands in the vowel-list between E and O, has formed the subject of the main part of these essays.  How does that vowel feel this morning?—­fresh, good-humored, and lively?  The Roundabout lines, which fall from this pen, are correspondingly brisk and cheerful.  Has anything, on the contrary, disagreed with the vowel?  Has its rest been disturbed, or was yesterday’s dinner too good, or yesterday’s wine not good enough?  Under such circumstances, a darkling, misanthropic tinge, no doubt, is cast upon the paper.  The jokes, if attempted, are elaborate and dreary.  The bitter temper breaks out.  That sneering manner is adopted, which you know, and which exhibits itself so especially when the writer is speaking about women.  A moody carelessness comes over him.  He sees no good in anybody or thing:  and treats gentlemen, ladies, history, and things in general, with a like gloomy flippancy.  Agreed.  When the vowel in question is in that mood, if you like airy gayety and tender gushing benevolence—­if you want to be satisfied with yourself and the rest of your fellow-beings; I recommend you, my dear creature, to go to some other shop in Cornhill, or turn to some other article.  There are moods in the mind of the vowel of which we are speaking, when it is ill-conditioned and captious.  Who always keeps good health, and good humor?  Do not philosophers grumble?  Are not sages sometimes out of temper? and do not angel-women go off in tantrums?  To-day my mood is dark.  I scowl as I dip my pen in the inkstand.