It is evident there was no change in him. He was just as much a selfish, coxcombical charlatan as when, fifteen years before, he wrote in one of his art papers of “exchanging our smart, tight-waisted, stiff-collared coat for an easy chintz gown with pink ribbons;” when he touched so lightly but luxuriantly on “our muse or maid-servant, a good-natured Venetian-shaped girl,” and of “our complacent consideration of our rather elegant figure, as seen in a large glass placed opposite our chimney mirror.” Others might be ashamed of self-idolatry; he gloried in it. Such was his description of himself; and who that has read it will ever forget that other description of him as exemplified by Gabriel Varney? “Pale, abject, cowering, all the bravery rent from his garb, all the gay insolence vanished from his brow, can that hollow-eyed, haggard wretch, be the same man whose senses opened on every joy, whose nerves mocked at every peril?”[21] The career of Wainwright is instructive. From the time that he quitted the simple rule of right, he wandered over the world under influences too fearful to detail, and he died in a hospital at Sydney under circumstances too painful to be recapitulated. From 1825 to 1835, there was a huge outcry against all the new offices, principally, however, raised by the old companies, who seemed to claim a patent right of preservation. They forgot that competition is the very soul of business, and mourned greatly as every new office made its appearance, although by 1835 only fourteen more were established. The following fraud was held in the light of a providence, and has long been quoted by them, though few are aware of the many remarkable circumstances in connection with the infamous “Independent and West Middlesex:”--