knee, his shaving apparatus by his side, and the quondam beau deeply
interested in lathering the peruke as a preliminary to shearing it. He
resisted every proposal to move, and was carried down stairs, kicking
and shrieking. Once lodged in the Hospice, he was treated by the soeurs
de charité with the greatest kindness and consideration. An attempt was
made to recall him to a sense of his future peril, that he might at
least die in a more religious mood than he had lived; but in vain. It is
not for us, erring and sinful as we are, to judge any fellow-creature;
but perhaps poor Brummell was the last man to whom religion had a
meaning. His heart was good; his sins were more those of vanity than
those of hate; it may be that they are regarded mercifully where the
fund of mercy is unbounded. God grant that they may be so; or who of us
would escape? None but fiends will triumph over the death of any man in
sin. Men are not fiends; they must and will always feel for their
fellow-men, let them die as they will. No doubt Brummell was a fool--a
fool of the first water, but that he was equally a knave was not so
certain. Let it never be certain to blind man, who cannot read the
heart, that any man is a knave. He died on the 30th of March, 1840, and
so the last of the Beaux passed away. People have claimed, indeed for
D'Orsay, the honour of Brummell's descending mantle, but D'Orsay was not
strictly a beau, for he had other and higher tastes than mere dress. It
has never been advanced that Brummell's heart was bad, in spite of his
many faults. Vanity did all. Vanitas vanitatem. O young men of this age,
be warned by a Beau, and flee his doubtful reputation! Peace then to the
coat-thinker. Peace to all--to the worst. Let us look within and not
judge. It is enough that we are not tried in the same balance.



THEODORE EDWARD HOOK.