ey conveyed a solemn prognostication of a
fate that was _not_ his. Little we dreamed, as we lisped out the verses,
that the 'gentleman who roamed in a' not velvet but 'plum-coloured
suit,' according to Lady Hester Stanhope, was the illustrious George
Brummell, The Beau wrote these trashy little rhymes--pretty in their
way--and, since I was once a child, and learnt them off by heart, I will
not cast a stone at them. Brummell indulged in such trifling poetizing,
but never went further. It is a pity he did not write his memoirs; they
would have added a valuable page to the history of 'Vanity Fair.'

Brummell's London glory lasted from 1798 to 1816. His chief club was
Watier's. It was a superb assemblage of gamesters and fops--knaves and
fools; and it is difficult to say which, element predominated. For a
time Brummell was monarch there; but his day of reckoning came at last.
Byron and Moore, Sir Henry Mildmay and Mr. Pierrepoint, were among the
members. Play ran high there, and Brummell once won nearly as much as
his squandered patrimony, L26.000. Of course he not only lost it again,
but much more--indeed his whole capital. It was after some heavy loss
that he was walking home through Berkeley Street with Mr. Raikes, when
he saw something glittering in the gutter, picked it up, and found it to
be a crooked sixpence. Like all small-minded men, he had a great fund of
superstition, and he wore the talisman of good luck for some time. For
two years, we are told, after this finding of treasure-trove, success
attended him in play--macao, the very pith of hazard, was the chief game
at Watier's--and he attributed it all to the sixpence. At last he lost
it, and luck turned against him. So goes the story. It is probably much
more easily accountable. Few men played honestly in those days without
losing to the dishonest, and we have no reason to charge the Beau with
mal-practice. However this may be, his losses at play first brought
about his ruin. The Jews were, of course, resorted to; and if Brummell
did not, like Charles Fox, keep a Jerusalem Chamber, it was only because
the sum total of his fortune was pretty well known to the money-lenders.

'Then came the change, the check, the fall;
Pain rises up, old pleasures pall.
There is one remedy for all.'

This remedy was the crossing of the Channel, a crossing kept by beggars,
who levy a heavy toll on those who pass over it.

The decline of the Beau was rapid, but not without