d, began to
imitate him unconsciously, after they had parted, speaking with curt
sentences, after the manner of the great man. We have all of us, no
doubt, met with more than one military officer who has so imitated the
manner of a certain great Captain of the Age; and has, perhaps, changed
his own natural character and disposition, because Fate had endowed him
with an aquiline nose. In like manner have we not seen many another man
pride himself on having a tall forehead and a supposed likeness to Mr.
Canning? many another go through life swelling with self-gratification
on account of an imagined resemblance (we say "imagined," because that
anybody should be really like that most beautiful and perfect of men is
impossible) to the great and revered George IV.: many third parties, who
wore low necks to their dresses because they fancied that Lord Byron and
themselves were similar in appearance: and has not the grave closed but
lately upon poor Tom Bickerstaff, who having no more imagination
than Mr. Joseph Hume, looked in the glass and fancied himself like
Shakspeare? shaved his forehead so as farther to resemble the immortal
bard, wrote tragedies incessantly, and died perfectly crazy--actually
perished of his forehead? These or similar freaks of vanity most people
who have frequented the world must have seen in their experience. Pen
laughed in his roguish sleeve at the manner in which his uncle began to
imitate the great man from whom they had just parted but Mr. Pen was as
vain in his own way, perhaps, as the elder gentleman, and strutted, with
a very consequential air of his own, by the Major's side.

"Yes, my dear boy," said the old bachelor, as they sauntered through
the Green Park, where many poor children were disporting happily, and
errand-boys were playing at toss-halfpenny, and black sheep were grazing
in the sunshine, and an actor was learning his part on a bench, and
nursery-maids and their charges sauntered here and there, and several
couples were walking in a leisurely manner; "yes, depend on it, my boy;
for a poor man, there is nothing like having good acquaintances. Who
were those men, with whom you saw me in the bow-window at Bays's?
Two were Peers of the realm. Hobananob will be a Peer, as soon as his
grand-uncle dies, and he has had his third seizure; and of the other
four, not one has less than his seven thousand a year. Did you see that
dark blue brougham, with that tremendous stepping horse, waiting a