leg for the pleasure of Lord Fife and Mr. Ball Hughes;
the grave regard directed by Lord Petersham towards that pretty little
maid-a-mischief who is risking her rouge beneath the chandelier; the
unbridled decorum of Mdlle. Hullin and the decorous debauchery of Prince
Esterhazy in the distance, make altogether a quite enchanting picture.
But, of the whole series, the most illuminative picture is certainly the
Ball at Almack's. In the foreground stand two little figures, beneath
whom, on the nether margin, are inscribed those splendid words, Beau
Brummell in Deep Conversation with the Duchess of Rutland. The Duchess
is a girl in pink, with a great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, the
Beau tres degage, his head averse, his chin most supercilious upon his
stock, one foot advanced, the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightly
in his waistcoat; in fact, the very deuce of a pose.

In this, as in all known images of the Beau, we are struck by the utter
simplicity of his attire. The 'countless rings' affected by D'Orsay, the
many little golden chains, 'every one of them slighter than a cobweb,'
that Disraeli loved to insinuate from one pocket to another of his vest,
would have seemed vulgar to Mr. Brummell. For is it not to his fine
scorn of accessories that we may trace that first aim of modern
dandyism, the production of the supreme effect through means the
least extravagant? In certain congruities of dark cloth, in the rigid
perfection of his linen, in the symmetry of his glove with his hand, lay
the secret of Mr. Brummell's miracles. He was ever most economical, most
scrupulous of means. Treatment was everything with him. Even foolish
Grace and foolish Philip Wharton, in their book about the beaux and
wits of this period, speak of his dressing-room as 'a studio in which
he daily composed that elaborate portrait of himself which was to be
exhibited for a few hours in the clubrooms of the town.' Mr. Brummell
was, indeed, in the utmost sense of the word, an artist. No poet nor
cook nor sculptor, ever bore that title more worthily than he.

And really, outside his art, Mr. Brummell had a personality of almost
Balzacian insignificance. There have been dandies, like D'Orsay, who
were nearly painters; painters, like Mr. Whistler, who wished to be
dandies; dandies, like Disraeli, who afterwards followed some less
arduous calling. I fancy Mr. Brummell was a dandy, nothing but a dandy,
from his cradle to that fearful day when he