The different stages of mental decay through which this unfortunate man passed, before he became hopelessly imbecile, it is painful to read of. One of his most singular eccentricities was, on certain nights some strange fancy would seize him that it was necessary he should give a party, and he accordingly invited many of the distinguished persons with whom he had been intimate in former days, though some of them were already dead. On these gala evenings he desired his attendant to arrange his apartment, set out a whist table, and light the _bougies_ (he burnt only tallow at the time), and at eight o'clock this man, to whom he had already given his instructions, opened wide the door of his sitting-room, and announced the "Duchess of Devonshire." At the sound of her grace's well-remembered name, the Beau, instantly rising from his chair, would advance towards the door, and greet the cold air from the staircase as if it had been the beautiful Georgiana herself. If the dust of that fair creature could have stood reanimate in all her loveliness before him, she would not have thought his bow less graceful than it had been thirty-five years before; for, despite poor Brummel's mean habiliments and uncleanly person, the supposed visitor was received with all his former courtly ease of manner, and the earnestness that the pleasure of such an honour might be supposed to excite. "Ah! my dear Duchess," faltered the Beau, "how rejoiced am I to see you; so very amiable of you at this short notice! Pray bury yourself in this arm-chair: do you know it was a gift to me from the Duchess of York, who was a very kind friend of mine; but, poor thing, you know she is no more." Here the eyes of the old man would fill with the tears of idiocy, and, sinking into the _fauteuil_ himself, he would sit for some time looking vacantly at the fire, until Lord Alvanley, Worcester, or any other old friend he chose to name, was announced, when he again rose to receive them and went through a similar pantomime. At ten his attendant announced the carriages, and this farce was at an end. Brummel's sayings are not brilliant in point. They doubtless owed their success to the inimitable impudence with which they were uttered. We have thrown together a few of his many repartees. Dining at a gentleman's house in Hampshire, where the champagne was very far from being good, he waited for a pause in the conversation, and then condemned it by raising his glass, and saying loud enough to be heard by every one at the table, "John, give me some more of that cider."