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even in that struggle-for such an one no ordinary faculties must have been demanded. Of the sayings of Brummel which have been preserved, it is difficult to distinguish whether they contain real wit, or are only so sublimely and so absurdly impudent that they look like witty.

When Brummel was at the height of his power, he was once, in the company of some gentlemen, speaking of the Prince of Wales as a very good sort of man, who behaved himself very decently, considering circumstances; some one present offered a wager that he would not dare to give a direction to this very good sort of man. Brummel looked astonished at the remark, and declined accepting a wager upon such a point. They happened to be dining with the regent the next day, and after being pretty well fortified with wine, Brummel interrupted a remark of the prince's, by exclaiming, very mildly and naturally, "Wales, ring the bell!" His royal highness immediately obeyed the command, and when the servant entered, said to him, with the utmost coolness and firmness, "Show Mr. Brummel to his carriage." The dandy was not in the least dejected by his expulsion; but meeting the regent, walking with a gentleman, the next day in the street, he did not bow to him, but stopping the other, drew him aside and said, in a loud whisper, "Who is that FAT FRIEND of ours?" It must be remembered that the object of this sarcasm was at that time exceedingly annoyed by his increasing corpulency; so manifestly so, that Sheridan remarked, that "though the regent professed himself a whig, he believed that in his heart he was no friend to new measures."

Shortly after this occurrence at Carlton-house, Brummel remarked to one of his friends, that "he had half a mind to cut the young one, and bring old George into fashion."

Brummel was once present at a party to which he had not been invited. After he had been some time in the room, the gentleman of the house, willing to mortify him, went up to him, and said that he believed there must be some mistake, as he did not recollect having the honour of sending him an invitation. "What is the name?"

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He once went down to a gentleman's house in the country, without having been asked to do so. He was given to understand, the next morning, that his absence would be more agreeable, and he took his departure. Some one having heard of his discomfiture, asked him how he liked the accommodations there. He replied coolly, that "it was a very decent house to spend a single night in."

We have mentioned that this dreaded arbiter of modes had threatened that he would put the prince regent out of fashion. Alas! for the peace of the British monarch, this was not an idle boast.

His dangerous rival resolved in the unfathomable recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to commence and to carry on a war whose terror and grandeur should astound society, to administer to audacious royalty a lesson which should never be forgotten, and finally to retire, when retire he must, with mementoes of his tremendous power around him, and with the mightiest of the earth at his feet. With rapid and decisive energy he concentrated all his powers for instantaneous action. He retired for a day to the seclusion of solitude, to summon and to spur the energies of the most self-reliant mind in Europe, as the lion draws back to gather courage for the leap. As, like the lion, he drew back; so, like the lion, did he spring forward upon his prey. At a ball given by the Duchess of Devonshire, when the whole assembly were conversing upon his supposed disgrace, and insulting by their malevolence one whom they had disgusted by their adulation, Brummel suddenly stood in the midst of them. Could it be indeed

Brummel? Could it be mortal who thus appeared with such an encincture of radiant glory about his neck? Every eye was upon him, fixed in stupid admiration every tongue, as it slowly recovered from its speechless paralysis, faltered forth" what a cravat !" What a cravat indeed! Hundreds that had, a moment before, exulted in unwonted freedom, bowed before it with the homage of servile adoration. What a cravat! There it stood; there was no doubting its entity, no believing it an illusion. There it stood, smooth and stiff, yet light and almost transparent; delicate as the music of Ariel, yet firm as the spirit of Regulus; bending with the grace of Apollo's locks, yet erect, with the majesty of the Olympian Jove without a wrinkle, without an indentation. What a cravat! The regent "saw and shook ;" and uttering a faint gurgle from beneath the wadded bag which surrounded his royal thorax, he was heard to whisper with dismay, "d-n him! what a cravat!" The triumph was complete.

It is stated, upon what authority we know not, that his royal highness, after passing a sleepless night in vain conjectures, despatched at an early hour one of his privy-councillors to Brummel, offering carte blanche if he would disclose the secret of that mysterious cravat. But the" atrox animus Catonis" disdained the bribe. He preferred being supplicated, to being bought, by kings. "Go," said he to the messenger, with the spirit of Marius mantling in his veins, "Go, tell your master that you have seen his master."

When, at length, yielding to that strong necessity which no man can control, Brummel was obliged, like Napoleon, to abdicate, the mystery of that mighty cravat was unfolded. There was found after his departure to Calais, written on a sheet of paper upon his table, the following epigram of scorn: "STARCH IS THE MAN." The cravat of Brummel was merely starched! Henceforth starch was introduced into every cravat in Europe.

This famous person died lately at Caen, in France, where he had been consul. For the last few years of his life he had been farmed out by a few of his quondam fellow-dandies-or, in plainer language, a subscription was

raised among his friends, and eighty pounds a year was given to an innkeeper at Caen to provide him with all the necessaries of life. He is described by those who knew him to have been the best made man of his day, and in the style of dress then prevalent (white-top boots and buckskin smallclothes) his fine proportions showed to great advantage. Added to this he was gifted with the readiest wit, and in coolness and ease of manner, even in the presence of royalty, he was inimitable. Brummel was often advised to marry, and had many opportunities. But it is supposed that the necessary exposé of his finances at the critical moment of "settlements," nipped all his rising matrimonial fortunes in the bud. He died as he lived-a lover of the table-but expressed to the last that bitter disgust at the heartlessness of society, which a dandy turned out to grass may be supposed to feel. With a little more of the "root of all evil," he might have been still an authority at Crockford's, and an indispensable at the petits soupers of Lord Sefton.

NOTES OF A READER.

HINDOO MAXIMS.

The mind is depraved by the society of the low; it riseth to equality with equals; and to distinction with the distinguished.

An influx of riches and constant health; a wife who is dear to me, and one who is of kind and agreeable speech; a child who is obedient, and useful knowledge, are, my son, the six pleasures of life.

Men of high or mean birth may be possessed of good qualities: but falling into bad company, they become vicious. Rivers flow with sweet waters; but having joined the ocean, they become

undrinkable.

Nor bathing with cool water, nor a necklace of pearls, nor anointing with sanders, yieldeth such comfort to the body oppressed with heat, as the language of a good man, cheerfully uttered, doth to the mind.

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It was an eve fit for an angel's birthnight, (and we know angels are born in this loving world,) and while the moon, as if shining only for artists' eyes, drew the outlines of palace and chapel, stern turret and serenaded belvidere, with her silver pencil on the street, two grave seniors, guardians in their own veins of the blood of two lofty names known long to Roman story, leaned together over a balcony of fretted stone, jutting out upon the Corso, and affianced a fair and noble maid of seventeen summers to a gentleman whose character you shall learn, if we come safe to the sequel.

"The cardinal has offered me a thousand scudi for my Giorgione," said the old Count Malaspina, at last, changing his attitude and the subject at the same time.

VOL. I. (21.)

"Animi di porco !" exclaimed the other, "what stirs the curtain? The wind is changing, Malaspina. Let us in! So, he offers but a thousand! I shall feel my rheumatism to-morrow with this change. But a thousand! ha, ha! Let us in! Let us in!"

"Let us out say I!" murmured two lips that were never made of cherries, though a bird might have pecked at them; and stealing from behind the curtain whose agitation had persuaded her father that the wind was rising, Violanta Cesarini, countess in her own right, and beautiful by heaven's rare grace, stepped forth into the moonlight.

She drew a long breath as she looked down into the Corso. The carriages were creeping up and down at a foot.. pace, and the luxurious dames, thrown back on their soft cushions, nodded to the passers-by, as they recognised friends and acquaintances where the moonlight broke through; crowds of slow promenaders loitered indolently on, now turning to look at the berrybrown back of a Contadina, with her

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stride like a tragedy-queen, and her eyes like wells of jet, and now leaning against a palace wall, while a wandering harp-girl sung better for a baioch than noble ladies for the praise of a cardinal; at one corner stood an artist with his tablet, catching some chance effect, perhaps in the drapery of a marble saint, perhaps in the softer drapery of a sinner; the cafés, far up and down, looked like festas out of doors, with their groups of gaily dressed idlers, eating sherbets and buying flowers; a grey friar passed now with his low-toned benedicite; and again a black cowl, with a face that reddened the very moonbeam that peeped under; hunchbacks contended testily for the wall, and tall fellows (by their long hair and fine symmetry, professed models for sculptors and painters) yielded to them with a gibe. And this is Rome when the moon shines well, and on this care-cheating scene looked down the Countess Violanta, with her heart as full of perplexity as her silk boddice-lace would bear without breaking.

I dare say you did not observe, if you were in Rome that night, and strolling, as you would have been, in the Corso, (this was three years ago last May, and if you were in the habit of reading the Diario di Roma, the story will not be new to you;) you did not observe, I am sure, that a thread ran across from the balcony I speak of, in the Palazzo Cesarini, to a high window in an old palace opposite, inhabited, as are many palaces in Rome, by a decayed family and several artists. On the two sides of this thread, pressed, while she mused, the slight fingers of Violanta Cesarini; and, as if it descended from the stars, at every pull which the light May-breeze gave it in passing, she turned her soft blue eyes upwards, and her face grew radiant with hope-not such as is fed with star-gazing!

Like a white dove shooting with slant wings downwards, a folded slip of paper flew across on this invisible thread, and, by heaven's unflickering lamp, Violanta read some characters traced with a rough crayon, but in most sweet Italian. A look upwards, and a nod, as if she were answering the stars that peeped over her, and

the fair form had gone with its snowy robes from the balcony, and across the high window from which the messenger had come, dropped the thick and impenetrable folds of the grey curtain of an artist.

It was a large upper room, such as is found in the vast houses of the decayed nobility of Rome, and of its two windows one was roughly boarded up to exclude the light, while a coarse grey cloth did nearly the same service at the other, shutting out all but an artist's modicum of day. The walls of rough plaster were covered with grotesque drawings, done apparently with bits of coal, varied here and there with scraps of unframed canvas heaped carelessly up, and covered with a study of some head, by a famous master. A large table on one side of the room was burdened with a confused heap of brushes, paint-bags, and discoloured cloths, surmounted with a clean palette; and not far off stood an easel, covered with thumb-marks of all dyes, and supporting a new canvas, on which was outlined the figure of a nymph, with the head finished in a style that would have stirred the warm blood of Raphael himself with emulous admiration. A low flock bed, and a chair without a bottom, but with a large cloak hung over its back, a pair of foils and a rapier, completed so much of the furniture of the room as belonged to a gay student of Correggio's art, who wrote himself Biondo Amieri.

By the light of the same antique lamp, hung on a rusty nail against the wall, you might see a very good effect on the face of an unfinished group in marble, of which the model, in plaster, stood a little behind, representing a youth with a dagger at his heart, arrested in the act of self-murder by a female, whose softened resemblance to him proclaimed her at the first glance his sister. A mallet, chisels, and other implements used in sculpture, lay on the rough base of the unfinished group, and half disclosed, half concealed by a screen covered with prints by some curious female hand, stood a bed with white curtains, and an oratory of carved oak at his head, supporting a clasped missal. A chair or two,

whose seats of worked satin had figured one day in more luxurious neighbour hood, a table covered with a few books and several drawings from the antique, and a carefully locked escritoire, served, with other appearances, to distinguish this side of the room as belonging to a separate occupant, of gentler taste or nurture,

While the adventurous Violanta is preparing herself to take advantage of the information received by her secret telegraph, I shall have time, dear reader, to put you up to a little of the family history of the Cesarini, necessary no less to a proper understanding of the story, than to the heroine's character for discretion. On the latter point, I would suggest to you, you may as well suspend your opinion.

It is well known to all the gossips in Rome, that, for four successive generations, the Marquises of Cesarini have obtained dispensations of the Pope for marrying beautiful peasant girls from the neighbourhood of their castle, in Romagna. The considerable sums paid for these dispensations, reconciled the Holy See to such an unprecedented introduction of vulgar blood into the veins of nobility, and the remarkable female beauty of the race, (heightened by the addition of nature's aristocracy to its own,) contributed to maintain good-will at a court, devoted above all others to the cultivation of the fine arts, of which woman is the eidolon and the soul. The last marquis, educated like his fathers, in their wild domain among the mountains, selected, like them, the fairest wild-flower that sprung at his feet, and after the birth of one son, applied for the tardy dispensation. From some unknown cause, (possibly a diminished bribe, as the marquis was less lavish in his disposition than his predecessors,) the Pope sanctioned the marriage, but refused to legitimatize the son, unless the next born should be a daughter. The marchioness soon after retired (from mortification it was supposed) to her home in the mountains, and after two years of close seclusion, returned to Rome, bringing with her an infant daughter, then three months of age, destined to be the heroine of our story. No other child appearing, the young Cesarini was legitimatized,

and with his infant sister, passed most of his youth at Rome. Some three or four years before the time when our tale commences, this youth, who had betrayed always a coarse and brutal temper, administered his stiletto to a gentleman on the Corso, and flying from Rome, became a brigand in the Abruzzi. His violence and atrocity, in this congenial life, soon put him beyond hope of pardon, and on his outlawry by the Pope, Violanta became the heiress of the estates of Cesarini.

The marchioness had died when Violanta was between seven and eight years of age, leaving her, by a deathbed injunction, in the charge of her own constant attendant, a faithful servant from Romagna, supposed to be a distant kinswoman to her mistress. With this tried dependant, the young countess was permitted to go where she pleased, at all hours, when not attended by her masters, and seeing her tractable and lovely, the old marquis, whose pride in the beauty of his family was the passion next to love of money in his heart, gave himself little trouble, and thought himself consoled for the loss of his son in the growing attractions and filial virtues of his daughter.

On a bright morning in early spring, six years before the date of our tale, the young countess and her attendant were gathering wild-flowers near the Fountain of Egeria, (of all spots of earth, that on which the wild-flowers are most profuse and sweetest,) when a deformed youth, who seemed to be no stranger to Donna Bettina, addressed Violanta in a tone of voice so musical, and with a look so kindly and winning, that the frank child took his hand, and led him off in search of cardinals and blue-bells, with the familiarity of an established playfellow. After this day, the little countess never came home pleased from a morning drive and ramble in which she had not seen her friend Signor Giulio; and the romantic baths of Caracalla, and the many delicious haunts among the ruins about Rome, had borne witness to the growth of a friendship, all fondness and impulse on the part of Violanta, all tenderness and delicacy on that of the deformed youth. By what wonderful instinct they happened always to meet, the delighted child

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