As for those Greeks and Romans whom you have read of in "sheepskin,"
were you to know really what those monsters were, you would blush all
over as red as a hollyhock, and put down the history-book in a fury.
Many of our English worthies are no better. You are not in a situation
to know the real characters of any one of them. They appear before you
in their public capacities, but the individuals you know not. Suppose,
for instance, your mamma had purchased her tea in the Borough from a
grocer living there by the name of Greenacre: suppose you had been asked
out to dinner, and the gentleman of the house had said: "Ho! Francois!
a glass of champagne for Miss Smith;"--Courvoisier would have served you
just as any other footman would; you would never have known that there
was anything extraordinary in these individuals, but would have thought
of them only in their respective public characters of Grocer and
Footman. This, Madam, is History, in which a man always appears dealing
with the world in his apron, or his laced livery, but which has not the
power or the leisure, or, perhaps, is too high and mighty to condescend
to follow and study him in his privacy. Ah, my dear, when big and little
men come to be measured rightly, and great and small actions to be
weighed properly, and people to be stripped of their royal robes,
beggars' rags, generals' uniforms, seedy out-at-elbowed coats, and
the like--or the contrary say, when souls come to be stripped of their
wicked deceiving bodies, and turned out stark naked as they were before
they were born--what a strange startling sight shall we see, and what a
pretty figure shall some of us cut! Fancy how we shall see Pride, with
his Stultz clothes and padding pulled off, and dwindled down to a forked
radish! Fancy some Angelic Virtue, whose white raiment is suddenly
whisked over his head, showing us cloven feet and a tail! Fancy
Humility, eased of its sad load of cares and want and scorn, walking
up to the very highest place of all, and blushing as he takes it!
Fancy,--but we must not fancy such a scene at all, which would be an
outrage on public decency. Should we be any better than our neighbors?
No, certainly. And as we can't be virtuous, let us be decent. Figleaves
are a very decent, becoming wear, and have been now in fashion for four
thousand years. And so, my dear, history is written on fig-leaves. Would
you have anything further? O fie!