ps and worse wines in
Continental impecuniosity, sleeping on them as rough Australian
shake-downs, or wearing them perpetually in Californian rags and
tatters, it were impossible very well to escape from them then; but it
is very hard to remember them when every touch and shape of life is
pleasant to us--when everything about us is symbolical and redolent of
wealth and ease--when the art of enjoyment is the only one we are Called
on to study, and the science of pleasure all we are asked to explore.

It is well-nigh impossible to believe yourself a beggar when you never
want sovereigns for whist; and it would be beyond the powers of human
nature to conceive your ruin irrevocable, while you still eat turbot and
terrapin with a powdered giant behind your chair daily. Up in his garret
a poor wretch knows very well what he is, and realises in stern fact the
extremities of the last sou, the last shirt, and the last hope; but in
these devil-may-care pleasures--in this pleasant, reckless, velvet-soft
rush down-hill--in this club-palace, with every luxury that the heart of
man can devise and desire, yours to command at your will--it is hard
work, _then_, to grasp the truth that the crossing-sweeper yonder, in
the dust of Pall Mall, is really not more utterly in the toils of
poverty than you are!

* * *

The bell was clanging and clashing passionately, as Cecil at last went
down to the weights, all his friends of the Household about him, and all
standing "crushers" on their champion, for their stringent _esprit du
corps_ was involved, and the Guards are never backward in putting their
gold down, as all the world knows. In the inclosure, the cynosure of
devouring eyes, stood the King, with the _sang froid_ of a superb
gentleman, amid the clamour raging round him, one delicate ear laid back
now and then, but otherwise indifferent to the din, with his coat
glistening like satin, the beautiful tracery of vein and muscle, like
the veins of vine-leaves, standing out on the glossy, clear-carved neck
that had the arch of Circassia, and his dark antelope eyes gazing with a
gentle, pensive earnestness on the shouting crowd.

His rivals, too, were beyond par in fitness and in condition, and there
were magnificent animals among them. Bay Regent was a huge, raking
chestnut, upwards of sixteen hands, and enormously powerful, with very
fine shoulders, and an all-over-like-going head; he belonged to a
Colonel in the Rifles