thing."

Brummel was once asked how much a year he thought would be
required to keep a single man in clothes. "Why, with
tolerable economy," said he, "I think it might be done for
L800."

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 mementos of his tremendous
power around him, and with the mightiest of the earth at his
feet. Inventive and deliberate were the counsels which he
meditated; sublime and resolute was the conduct he adopted.
He decided, with an originality of genius to which the
conqueror of Marengo might have vailed, that the _neck_ of
the foe was the point at which the first fatal shaft of his