The unsuccessful student was soon in possession of what he considered far better than “book learning,” a third of £65,000. It was no great inheritance for a cornet in the 10th Hussars. That illustrious regiment had not yet achieved that renown of folly and of shame for which Croly pilloried it nightly, to the delight of assembled thousands, in his ‘Pride shall have a Fall.’ It was however the aspiration and the terror of all young heroes who longed to be enrolled in the sacred cohort, and who dreaded the fabulous cost of the luxury. The officers, like their ancestors at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, wore their estates upon their backs,—some of them before they had inherited the paternal acres. If the gorgeous costume and its never-ending variations did not effect this consummation, the expenses of the mess, where the mild warriors banqueted like barbaric sovereigns, and the cost of the delicate amusements of those perfumed knights, rarely failed to accomplish it. At the head of all, glittering example of the “gentleman,” careful of carriage, courteous of speech, not ungenerous by impulse, but icy-cold of heart, was the Prince-Colonel, George, afterwards Fourth of the name. The Prince’s chief intimate was Lord James Murray, subsequently Lord Glenlyon; at whose house at Datchet, old Queen Charlotte “did _never_ counsel take, _but_ sometimes tea.” The new cornet superseded the old friend. The latter was a mild, gentleman-like man, popular with everybody but his creditors, _quorum pars fui_; and I may add, that he is pleasantly and gratefully remembered by _one_ at least of them. Brummell however took the Regent by storm. There was no resisting him. The Prince was fascinated. Brummell might be absent from parade, neglect duties even more important, and laugh at all suggestion and reproach,—“our general’s friend was now the general.” He did precisely what he pleased, nothing that he ought; and in three years he was full captain, to the as full disgust of older officers, who enviously admired while they deeply cursed him. Never probably was the Beau in such full-blown glory as at this period of his gold-lace, best jokes, and increasing sway. He was in the very height of his ecstatic enjoyment, luxuriating in the gentility of a “gentil Hussard,” and mastering his profession, not exactly after the fashion of Marlborough;—he was in the very paradisiacal state of aristocratic soldiership, when the regiment was ordered to Manchester. Brummell nearly fainted at the idea of such vulgarity, and he left the regiment in infinite disgust. The step gained for him an immense increase of reputation—among fools!