25 AUGUST 1832, Page 14

AN AFFAIR OF HONOUR.

WmAT exceeding asses we are! We could laugh for ever at the follies of men, did we not grieve over the fact of belonging to them.

A couple of foreigners of rank, a Prince and a Count, quarrelled with each other: it seems something offensive was said in a whis- per-the time, evening-after dinner at a club-or a party-n'inz- porte: the satirist must pay for his whisper in early rising, and blood, or the chance of it. The Prince retires to his hotel-writes the hostile billet-at five in the morning the stain must be wiped out. The Count, returning home at a late hour, finds the hotel- scribble challenging to mortal combat. What is to be done for a friend, and what for arms? Here is a delicate distress! bloodshed. to be done, and nothing to do it with, and no friend-to swear it was done fairly! Concave, then, a Russian son of Adam wander- ing about this civilized capital in the middle of the night, seeking, not an honest man with a lantern, but a friend-a modern friend -and then trying shop after shop, by lamplight, for a gunsmith s abode. Luckily, the Horse Guards were keeping the zatitmal Watch—a ladling had a pair of hair-triggers, and the kindness" to lend them for the occasion. Well then—by the aad of an Eng- lish noble, two Russian ones are enabled to blow each other's brains out. But the weapons are more capricious than is known to Russian art; they go off, under clumsy handling; and the man who will not for his life apologize for the offensive whisper, has to apologize for a random report. A mutual fire takes place—no effect: but the Pollee are seen in the horizon—sauve qui peat, as at Waterloo—off run the Russian Princes and their friends (not leaving, it is to be hoped, the lordling's pistols as a lawful prize) • the ground is cleared—no shutter is wanted at Chalk Farm: the matter is made up, by means of a note or two—and thus ends a modern affitir of honour! And these are rational men—nobles- slave or serf owners perhaps—managers of the welfare of thou- sands—nay, perhaps, diplomatists and ministers, on whom, now or at some other time, the fate of millions of honest citizens may rest !

This, then, is honour : to take fire at a whisper—to scribble a challenge in a coffberoom—to wander about the streets, glass in hand, to decipher the ensign of a pistohnaker's shop—to borrow implements of destruction, of the management of which you are ignorant—and after blundering away half an hour in the ineffec- tual use of them, to run away from the Police of the neighbour- hood!