“I knew how it would be,” she said, “with base natures such as his and Churchill’s. We accept their assistance, but despise the instrument. He will now be fierce against his benefactor, (who, though a bad king, was tender to his friends,) and bitterer against his faith than if he had never been either a courtier or a bigot. I receive his congratulations, Sir Walter Ouseley, but I decline an interview for some time to come.”
“He desired me also, my lady,” said Sir Walter, “to convey his blessing to the bride, and his tender love to his new son, the Viscount Lessingholm.”
“Well, let them not reject it. The blessing even of such a father has its value. But we must now make preparation, for the celebration of the happy nuptials, in a style fitting the rank of the parties. The prince is pleased with what we have done”——
The young man, Sir Walter Ouseley, who had been whispering in my ear, here broke in on the great lady’s speech.
“If it would please you, madam, at the same time, to permit two others to be happy, I have obtained Master Willis’s consent thereto, and also the consent of this fair maiden.”
The viscountess took Waller in her arms, and kissed her cheek, and the great lady smiled.
“I knew not, Sir Walter Ouseley, that you were so perfect a soldier as to sustain an attack and lay siege at the same time; but since in both you have been successful, I give you my hearty good wishes. And so, dear friends and true supporters, let us be thankful for the great deliverance wrought for this land and nation, as well as for ourselves. Our defender, the noble William, landed three days ago at Torbay, and is now in Hampton Court. The king has taken flight, never to be restored. Therefore, God save the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary, the props and ornaments of a true Protestant throne!”
BEAU BRUMMELL.[A]
All things change; ours is the age of masses and classes, the last was the age of individuals. Half a dozen remarkable men then represented the London world, in politics, poetry, bon-mots, dining out, and gaming. Pitt and Fox, the Dukes of Queensberry and Norfolk, Sheridan and General Scott, were the substitutes for mankind in the great metropolis. George Brummell was the last of the beaus. The flame of beauism was expiring; but it flamed in its socket brighter than ever, and Beau Brummell made a more conspicuous figure in the supreme bon-ton of elegant absurdity, than any or all his predecessors. The only permanent beau on earth is the American savage. The Indians, who have been lately exhibiting their back-wood deformities in our island at shilling a-head, were prodigious dressers; Greek taste might probably have dissented from their principles of costume, but there could be no doubt of the study of their decoration. Their coiffeur might not altogether supersede either the Titus or the Brutus in the eye of a Parisian, but it had evidently been twisted on system; and if their drapery in general might startle Baron Stulz, it evidently cost as dexterous cutting out, and as ambitious tailoring, as the most recherché suit that ever turned a “middling man” into a figure for Bond Street.
But the charm which is the very soul of European fashion, is scorned by the Indian. Change—the “Cynthia of the minute,” the morning thought and midnight dream of the dilettanti in human drapery—has no captivation for the red man. He may like variety in his scalps or his squaws; but not a feather, not a stripe of yellow on one cheek, or of green on another, exhibits a sign of the common mutabilities of man. He struts in the plumes which his fathers wore, is attired in the same nether garments, exhibits the same head-gear, and decorates his physiognomy with the sane proportion of white-wash, red-lead, bear’s-grease, and Prussian blue.