The ante-chamber was already crowded. I sat myself quietly down in one
corner of the room, and looked upon the motley groups around. I smiled
inly as they reminded me of the scenes my own anteroom, in my younger
days of folly and fortune, was wont to exhibit; the same heterogeneous
assemblage (only upon a grander scale) of the ministers to the physical
appetites and the mental tastes. There was the fretting and impudent
mountebank, side by side with the gentle and patient scholar; the
harlot's envoy and the priest's messenger; the agent of the police and
the licensed breaker of its laws; there--but what boots a more prolix
description? What is the anteroom of a great man, who has many wants
and many tastes, but a panorama of the blended disparities of this
compounded world?

While I was moralizing, a gentleman suddenly thrust his head out of a
door, and appeared to reconnoitre us. Instantly the crowd swept up to
him. I thought I might as well follow the general example, and pushing
aside some of my fellow-loiterers, I presented myself and my name to the
gentleman, with the most ingratiating air I could command.

The gentleman, who was tolerably civil for a great man's great man,
promised that my visit should be immediately announced to the Prince;
and then, with the politest bow imaginable, slapped the door in my face.
After I had waited about seven or eight minutes longer, the gentleman
reappeared, singled me from the crowd, and desired me to follow him; I
passed through another room, and was presently in the Regent's presence.

I was rather startled when I saw, by the morning light, and in
deshabille, the person of that royal martyr to dissipation. His
countenance was red, but bloated, and a weakness in his eyes added