etting
it up.

His dress was equally creditable to his tailor and his valet, "rather
rich than gaudy," (as Miss Byron said of Sir Charles Grandison,) except
in the grand article of the waistcoat, a brocade brode of resplendent
lustre, which combined both qualities. His shoes were bright with the
new French blacking, and his jewellery, rings, studs, brooches, and
chains (for he wore two, that belonging to his watch, and one from which
depended a pair of spectacles, folded so as to resemble an eye-glass,)
were of the finest material and the latest fashion.

In short, our new acquaintance was an old beau. He was not, however,
that which an old beau so frequently is, an old bachelor. On the
contrary, he spoke of Mrs. Thompson and her parties, and her box at the
opera (he did not say on what tier) with some unction, and mentioned
with considerable pride a certain Mr. Browne, who had lately married his
eldest daughter; Browne, be it observed, with an _e_, as his name (I beg
his pardon for having misspelt it) was Thomson without the _p_; there
being I know not what of dignity in the absence of the consonant, and
the presence of the vowel, though mute. We soon found that both he and
Mr. Browne lent these illustrious names to half a score of clubs, from
the Athenaeum downward. We also gathered from his conversation that he
resided somewhere in Gloucester Place or Devonshire Place, in Wimpole
Street or Harley Street, (I could not quite make out in which of those
respectable double rows of houses his domicile was situate,) and that he
contemplated with considerable jealousy the manner in which the tide
of fashion had set in to the south-west, rolling its changeful current
round the splendid mansions of Belgrave Square, and threatening to leave
this once distinguished quartier as bare and open to the jesters of
the silver-fork school as the ignoble precincts of Bloomsbury. It was a
strange mixture of feeling. He was evidently upon the point of becoming
ashamed of a neighbourhood of which he had once been not a little proud.
He spoke slightingly of the Regent's Park, and eschewed as much as
possible all mention of the Diorama and the Zoological, and yet seemed
pleased and flattered, and to take it as a sort of personal compliment,
when Mrs. Dunbar professed her fidelity to the scene of her youthful
gaiety, Cavendish Square and its environs.

He had been, it seemed, an old friend of the General's, and had coine
down partly to see