our great Duke's levees at St. James's were as thronged
as they had been at Ghent and Brussels, where we treated him, and he us,
with the grandeur and ceremony of a sovereign. Though Esmond had been
appointed to a lieutenancy in the Fusileer regiment, of which that
celebrated officer, Brigadier John Richmond Webb, was colonel, he
had never joined the regiment, nor been introduced to its excellent
commander, though they had made the same campaign together, and been
engaged in the same battle. But being aide-de-camp to General Lumley,
who commanded the division of horse, and the army marching to its point
of destination on the Danube by different routes, Esmond had not fallen
in, as yet, with his commander and future comrades of the fort; and it
was in London, in Golden Square, where Major-General Webb lodged, that
Captain Esmond had the honor of first paying his respects to his friend,
patron, and commander of after days.

Those who remember this brilliant and accomplished gentleman may
recollect his character, upon which he prided himself, I think, not a
little, of being the handsomest man in the army; a poet who writ a
dull copy of verses upon the battle of Oudenarde three years after,
describing Webb, says:--

"To noble danger Webb conducts the way,
His great example all his troops obey;
Before the front the general sternly rides,
With such an air as Mars to battle strides:
Propitious heaven must sure a hero save,
Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave."

Mr. Webb thought these verses quite as fine as Mr. Addison's on the
Blenheim Campaign, and, indeed, to be Hector a la mode de Paris, was
part of this gallant gentleman's ambition. It would have been difficult
to find an officer in the whole army, or amongst the splendid courtiers
and cavaliers of the Maison du Roy, that fought under Vendosme and
Villeroy in the army opposed to ours, who was a more accomplished
soldier and perfect gentleman, and either braver or better-looking.
And if Mr. Webb believed of himself what the world said of him, and was
deeply convinced of his own indisputable genius, beauty, and valor, who
has a right to quarrel with him very much? This self-content of his kept
him in general good-humor, of which his friends and dependants got the
benefit.

He came of a very ancient Wiltshire family, which he respected above all
families in the world: he could prove a lineal descent from King Edward
the First, and h