s breeches is mended
against he goes to schule again?'--'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.'--'And,
I say, William, you'll see I'm laid proper in the yard?' William grew
impatient. 'Now never thee mind them things, wife, I'll see to 'em all,
you just go on with your dying.' No doubt Brummell's friends heartily
wished that he would go on with his dying, for he had already lived too
long; but he would live on. He is described in his last days as a
miserable, slovenly, half-witted old creature, creeping about to the
houses of a few friends he retained or who were kind enough to notice
him still, jeered at by the _gamins_, and remarkable now, not for the
cleanliness, but the filthiness and raggedness of his attire.

Poor old fool! one cannot but pity him, when wretched, friendless, and
miserable as he was, we find him, still graceful, in a poor _cafe_ near
the Place Royale, taking his cup of coffee, and when asked for the
amount of his bill, answering very vaguely, 'Oui, Madame, a la pleine
lune, a la pleine lune.'

The drivellings of old age are no fit subject for ridicule, yet in the
case of a man who had sneered so freely at his fellow-creatures, they
may afford a useful lesson. One of his fancies was to give imaginary
parties, when his tallow dips were all set alight and his servant
announced with proper decorum, 'The Duchess of Devonshire,' 'Lord
Alvanley, 'Mr. Sheridan,' or whom not. The poor old idiot received the
imaginary visitors with the old bow, and talked to them in the old
strain, till his servant announced their imaginary carriages, and he was
put drivelling to bed. At last the idiocy became mania. He burnt his
books, his relics, his tokens. He ate enormously, and the man who had
looked upon beer as the _ne plus ultra_ of vulgarity, was glad to
imagine it champagne. Let us not follow the poor maniac through his
wanderings. Rather let us throw a veil over all his drivelling
wretchedness, and find him at his last gasp, when coat and collar, hat
and brim, were all forgotten, when the man who had worn three shirts a
day was content to change his linen once a month. What a lesson, what a
warning! If Brummell had come to this pass in England, it is hard to say
how and where he would have died. He was now utterly penniless, and had
no prospect of receiving any remittances. It was determined to remove
him to the Hospice du Bon Sauveur, a _Maison de Charite_, where he would
be well cared for at no expense. The mania of the