n. His intelligence was
flattering. An old uncle of mine, who had worn out all that was human
about him in amassing fifty thousand pounds, and finally died of
starving himself, had expired with the pen in his hand, in the very act
of leaving his thousands to pay the national debt. But fate, propitious
to me, had dried up his ink-bottle; the expense of replenishing it would
have broken his heart of itself; and the attorney's announcement to me
was, that the will, after blinding the solicitor to the treasury and
three of his clerks, was pronounced to be altogether illegible.

The fact that I was the nearest of kin got into the newspapers; and in
my first drive down St. James's, I had the pleasure of discovering that
I had cured a vast number of my friends of their calamitous defect of
vision. But if the "post equitem sedet atra cura" was the maxim in the
days of Augustus, the man who drives the slower cabriolet in the days of
George the Fourth, cannot expect to escape. The "hour too many" overtook
me in the first week. On one memorable evening I saw it coming, just as
I turned the corner of Piccadilly; fair flight was hopeless, and I took
refuge in that snug asylum on the right hand of St. James's Street,
which has since expanded into a palace. I stoutly battled the foe, for I
"took no note of time" during the next day and night; and when at last I
walked forth into the air, I found that I had relieved myself of the
burden of three-fourths of my reversion. A weak mind on such an occasion
would have cursed the cards, and talked of taking care of the fragment
of his property; but mine was of the higher order, and I determined on
revenge. I had my revenge, and saw my winners ruined. They had their
consolation, and at the close of a six months' campaign saw me walk into
the streets a beggar. I grew desperate, and was voted dangerous. I
realized the charge by fastening on a noble lord who had been one of the
most adroit in pigeoning me. His life was "too valuable to his country,"
or himself, to allow him to meet a fellow whose life was of no use to
any living thing; and through patriotism and the fear of being shot, he
kept out of my way. I raged, threatened to post his lordship, and was in
the very act of writing out the form of the placard declaring the noble
heir of the noble house of ---- a cheat and a scoundrel, when by the
twopenny-post I received a notice from the Horse Guards that I was on
that day to appear in the Gaze