George Canning, at
the commencement of the French Revolution, sneered at "Roland the Just,
with ribbons in his shoes," and the dandies, who then wore buckles,
voted the sarcasm monstrous killing. It was a joke, my dear, worthy of a
lackey, or of a silly smart parvenu, not knowing the society into which
his luck had cast him (God help him! in later years, they taught him
what they were!), and fancying in his silly intoxication that simplicity
was ludicrous and fashion respectable. See, now, fifty years are gone,
and where are shoebuckles? Extinct, defunct, kicked into the irrevocable
past off the toes of all Europe!
How fatal to the parvenu, throughout history, has been this respect
for shoebuckles. Where, for instance, would the Empire of Napoleon
have been, if Ney and Lannes had never sported such a thing as a
coat-of-arms, and had only written their simple names on their shields,
after the fashion of Desaix's scutcheon yonder?--the bold Republican who
led the crowning charge at Marengo, and sent the best blood of the
Holy Roman Empire to the right-about, before the wretched misbegotten
imperial heraldry was born, that was to prove so disastrous to the
father of it.
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