text:  Would this have been a fit subject for description? or is it just to think of the respectable Bailie in the ridiculous point of view in which he is presented to us in the Highlands? How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long ago by Algerine pirates and torn with all his civic honours thick upon him from the magisterial chair and made hairdresser to the ladies of the harem--threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing as he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from odd juxtapositions