Jupiter in Homer, did more by a nod than others by a
harangue--made more as a scene-shifter than any actor on the stage of
Westminster--continually crept on, while whole generations of highfliers
dropped and died; and at length, like a worm at the bottom of a pool,
started up to the surface, put on wings, and fluttered in the sunshine,
Earl of Liverpool! The loss of such a biography is a positive injury to
all students of the art of rising. Jenkinson was struck by the neatness
of the autograph in which "Apartments to be Let" was displayed on the
door; and probably, conscious that the "art of letting" was the true
test of talents, made the young writer his amanuensis, and finally
obtained for him a clerkship in the treasury. He was next in connexion
with Lord North for the twelve years of that witty and blundering
nobleman's unhappy administration, and enjoyed no less than _three
offices_, by which he netted L.2500 a-year. He was abused a good deal by
the party-ink of his time; but the salary enabled him to bear spattering
to any amount, and probably only increased Lord North's sympathy for his
fellow-sufferer, until that noble lord was suffocated in the public
mire.

But after the crush of the minister, the man felt that his day was done;
and he retired to "domestic virtue" as it is termed, took a good house
in the country, enjoyed himself, and in 1794 died, leaving two sons and
a daughter, and L.65,000 among them.

George Bryan Brummell, the second son, was born in June 1778. The
biographer observes characteristically, that the beau avoided the topic
of his genealogical tree with a sacred mystery. It appears that he
avoided with equal caution all mention of the startling fact, that one
of his Christian names was _Bryan_. It never escaped his lips; it never
slipped into his signature; it was never suffered to "come between the
wind and his nobility." If it had by any unhappy chance transpired, he
must have fainted on the spot, have fled from society, and hid his
discomfiture in

"Deserts where no men abide."

Brummell was a dandy by instinct, a good dresser by the force of
original genius; a first-rate tyer of cravats on the _in_voluntary
principle. When a boy at Eton, in 1790, he acquired his first
distinction not by "longs and shorts," but by the singular nicety of his
stock with a gold buckle, the smart cut of his coat, and his finished
study of manners. Others might see glory only through hexameters and
pen