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 lost his figure and
had to flee the country, even to that distant day when he died, a
broken exile, in the arms of two religieuses. At Eton, no boy was so
successful as he in avoiding that strict alternative of study and
athletics which we force upon our youth. He once terrified a master,
named Parker, by asserting that he thought cricket `foolish.' Another
time, after listening to a reprimand from the headmaster, he twitted
that learned man with the asymmetry of his neckcloth. Even in Oriel he
could see little charm, and was glad to leave it, at the end of his
first year, for a commission in the Tenth Hussars. Crack though the
regiment was--indeed, all the commissions were granted by the Regent
himself--young Mr. Brummell could not bear to see all his brother-
officers in clothes exactly like his own; was quite as deeply annoyed
as would be some god, suddenly entering a restaurant of many mirrors.
One day, he rode upon parade in a pale blue tunic, with silver
epaulettes. The Colonel, apologising for the narrow system which
compelled him to so painful a duty, asked him to leave the parade. The
Beau saluted, trotted back to quarters and, that afternoon, sent in
his papers. Henceforth he lived freely as a fop, in his maturity,
should.