which he had started, and lived, with a few hundreds a-year, as if he had possessed as many thousands. The proximity of my quiet club to the fashionable and expensive one into which he had obtained admission, gave me many opportunities of observing his proceedings, and those opportunities, in my capacity of a student of human nature, I did not neglect. I had marked his career and ultimate fate in my mind, and was curious to see my predictions verified, although I sincerely wished they might not be, for they were anything but favourable to the welfare of Oakley, who, in spite of his follies, had generous and manly qualities. His prodigality was not of that purely egotistical description most commonly found in spendthrifts of his class. He would give a lavish alms to a whining beggar, as freely as he would throw away a handful of gold on some folly of the moment or extravagant debauch; and I had heard an old one-armed soldier, who sometimes held his horse at the club door, utter blessings, when he had ridden out of hearing, on his kind heart and open hand. These and similar little traits that came under my notice, made me regret to see him going post to perdition. That he was doing so, I could not for one moment doubt. His extravagance knew no limit, and in six months he must have got through as many years' income. Wherever pleasure was to be had, no matter at what price, Oakley was to be seen.--Upon a revenue overrated at five hundred a-year, he kept half a dozen horses, a cab, and a strange nondescript vehicle, made after an eccentric design of his own, and which everybody turned to look at, as he drove down Piccadilly of an afternoon, on his way to the Park. He had his stall at the opera, of course, and an elegant set of apartments in the most expensive street in London, where he gave suppers and dinners of extravagant delicacy to thirsty friends and greedy _danseuses_. The former showed their gratitude for his good cheer by winning his money at cards; the latter evinced their affection by carrying off the costly nicknacks that strewed his rooms, and by taking his diamond shirt-pins to fasten their shawls. In short, he regularly delivered himself over to the harpies. In addition to these minor drafts upon his exchequer, came others of a more serious nature. He played high, and never refused a bet. Like many silly young men (and some silly old ones), he had a blind veneration for rank, and held that a lord could do no wrong. Even a baronetcy conferred a certain degree of infallibility in his eyes. No amount of respectable affidavits would have convinced him that if Lord Rufus Slam, who not unfrequently condescended to win a cool fifty of him at écarté, did not turn the king each time he dealt, it was only because he despised so hackneyed a swindle, and had other ways of securing the game, equally nefarious but less palpable. Neither would it have been possible to persuade him that Sir Tantivy Martingale, "that prime fellow and thorough