CHAP. VII.] POTATOES. 283 



cloak, we do not find that that audience were, 

 like our learned men, so unjust as to pursue 

 him with reproaches and with every act that a 

 vindictive mind can suggest. They perceived 

 how foolish they had been, they hung down 

 their heads in silence, and, I dare say, would 

 not easily be led to admire the mountebank 

 again. 



271. It is fashion, Sir, to which in these 

 most striking instances, sense and reason have 

 yielded ; and it is to fashion that the potatoe 

 owes its general cultivation and use. If you 

 ask me whether fashion can possibly make a 

 nation prefer one sort of diet to another, I ask 

 you what it is that can make a nation admire 

 Shakespear ? What is it that can make them 

 call him a " Divine Bard," nine-tenths of whose 

 works are made up of such trash as no decent 

 man, now-a-days, would not be ashamed, and 

 even afraid, to put his name to? What can 

 make an audience in London sit and hear, and 

 even applaud, under the name of Shakespear, 

 what they would hoot off the stage in a moment, 

 if it came forth under any other name? When 

 folly has once given the fashion she is a very 

 persevering dame. An American writer, whose 

 name is GEORGE DORSEY, I believe, and who 

 has recently published a pamphlet, called, "The 

 " UNITED STATES AND ENGLAND, &c," being a 



