nt the Major was growing, and
what numberless little comforts he required.

If men sneer, as our habit is, at the artifices of an old beauty, at
her paint, perfumes, ringlets; at those innumerable, and to us unknown,
stratagems with which she is said to remedy the ravages of time and
reconstruct the charms whereof years have bereft her; the ladies, it is
to be presumed, are not on their side altogether ignorant that men are
vain as well as they, and that the toilets of old bucks are to the full
as elaborate as their own. How is it that old Blushington keeps that
constant little rose-tint on his cheeks; and where does old Blondel get
the preparation which makes his silver hair pass for golden? Have
you ever seen Lord Hotspur get off his horse when he thinks nobody is
looking? Taken out of his stirrups, his shiny boots can hardly totter up
the steps of Hotspur House. He is a dashing young nobleman still as you
see the back of him in Rotten Row; when you behold him on foot, what
an old, old fellow! Did you ever form to yourself any idea of Dick Lacy
(Dick has been Dick these sixty years) in a natural state, and without
his stays? All these men are objects whom the observer of human life
and manners may contemplate with as much profit as the most elderly
Belgravian Venus, or inveterate Mayfair Jezebel. An old reprobate
daddy-longlegs, who has never said his prayers (except perhaps in
public) these fifty years: an old buck who still clings to as many of
the habits of youth as his feeble grasp of health can hold by: who has
given up the bottle, but sits with young fellows over it, and tells
naughty stories upon toast-and-water--who has given up beauty, but still
talks about it as wickedly as the youngest roue in company--such an old
fellow, I say, if any parson in Pimlico or St. James's were to order
the beadles to bring him into the middle aisle, and there set him in
an armchair, and make a text of him, and preach about him to the
congregation, could be turned to a wholesome use for once in his life,
and might be surprised to find that some good thoughts came out of him.
But we are wandering from our text, the honest Major, who sits all this
while with his feet cooling in the bath: Morgan takes them out of that
place of purification, and dries them daintily, and proceeds to set the
old gentleman on his legs, with waistband and wig, starched cravat, and
spotless boots and gloves.

It was during these hours of the toilet that