road to riches and fame.

"It is well known that a certain French woman, with long flowing black
hair, who lived not an hundred miles from Pimlico, was one who fell into
this error. Her weight is about sixteen stone--and on that account she
sets herself down as this illustrious person's mistress; nay, because he
saw her once, she took expensive lodgings, ran deeply in debt, and now
abuses the great man because he has not provided for her in a princely
style, "_pour se beaux yeux_;" for it must be admitted, that she can boast
as fine a pair of black eyes as ever were seen. The circumstance of
this taste for materialism, is as unfortunate to the possessor, as a
convulsive nod of the head once was to a rich gentleman, who was never
without being engaged in some law suit or other, for lots knocked down
to him at auctions, owing to his incessant and involuntary noddings at
these places. The fat ladies wish the illustrious amateur to pay for
peeping, just as the crafty knights of the hammer endeavoured to make
the rich gentleman pay for his nodding at them."

"Fat, fair, and forty, then," said Sparkle, "does not appear to be
forgotten."

~~360~~~ "No," was the reply, "nor is it likely: the wits of London are
seldom idle upon subjects of importance: take for instance the following
lines:--

"When first I met thee, FAT and fair,
With forty charms about thee,
A widow brisk and _debonair_,
How could I live without thee.

Thy rogueish eye I quickly spied,
It made me still the fonder,
I swore though false to all beside,
From thee I'd never wander.

But old Fitzy now,
Thou'rt only fit to tease me,
And C----------M I vow,
Has learn't the art to please me."

By this time they were passing Grosvenor gate, when the Hon. Tom Dashall
directed the attention of his Cousin to a person on the opposite side of
the street, pacing along with a stiff and formal air.

"That," said he, "is a new species of character, if it may properly be
so termed, of which I have never yet given you any account. Sir Edward
Knowell stands, however, at the head of a numerous and respectable class
of persons, who may be entitled Philosophic Coxcombs. He proceeds with
geometrical exactness in all his transactions. You can perceive finery
of dress is no mark of his character; on the contrary, he at all times
wears a plain coat; and as i