but they must have sparkled prodigiously among the exhausted
circles of his West-end day.

"You seem to have caught cold, Brummell," said a lounging visitor on
hearing him cough. "Yes--I got out of my carriage yesterday, coming from
the Pavilion, and the wretch of an innkeeper put me into the coffee-room
with a damp stranger."

In a stormy August--"Brummell, did any one ever see such a summer
day?"--"Yes, _I_ did, last winter."

On returning from a country mansion, of which he happened to disapprove,
he defined it "An exceedingly good house for stopping a _single_ night
in."

On the whole, the biographer has given a tolerable selection of
Brummell's _hits_, some of which, however, were so intolerably
impertinent, that he must have either thoroughly "known his man," or he
must have smoothed down their severity by some remarkable tone of voice
or pleasantry of visage. Without those palliations, it is not easy to
comprehend his occasional rudeness even to friends. One day, standing
and speaking at the carriage-door of a lady, she expressed her surprise
at his throwing away his time on so quiet and unfashionable a
person.--"My dear friend, don't mention it: there is _no one to see
us_."

But his admiration for the sex must have often brought him close on the
edge of serious inconvenience. Once, at the house of a nobleman, he
requested a moment's interview in the library, and then and there
communicated the formidable intelligence, "that he must immediately
leave the house--on that day."

"Why, you intended to stay a month," said his hospitable entertainer.

"True--but I must be gone--I feel I am in love with your countess."

"Well, my dear sir, I can't help that. I was in love with her myself
twenty years ago," said the good-humoured husband. "But is she in love
with you?"

The Beau cast down his eyes, and, in all the modesty of impudence, said
faintly, "I believe she is."

"Oh! that alters the case. I shall send for your post-horses. Good
morning."

His life was flirtation, a matter which could not be indulged in
matrimony, and he therefore never married. Yet once he went so far as to
elope with a young person of rank from a ball: the pair were, however,
immediately overtaken. The affair was, of course, the talk of the clubs.
But Brummell had his own way of wearing the willow. "On the whole," said
he, "I consider I have reason to congratulate myself. I lately heard
from her favourite maid that her ladyship