~214~~ men and manners display no common mind. Yet here he was seen associated with the most depraved of the human species--the gambler by profession, the common cheat! What wonder that such connexions should have compelled him for a time to become an exile to his country, and on his return involved him in a transaction that has ended in irretrievable ruin and disgrace? "By the honour of my ancestry," said Lionise, "yonder is that delectable creature, old Crony, the dinner many that is the most surprising animal we have yet found among the modern discoveries--polite to and point--always well dressed--keeps the best society--or, I should say, the best society keeps him: to an amazing fund of the newest on dits and anecdotes of ton, always ready cut and dried, he joins a smattering of the classics, and chops logic with the learned that he may carve their more substantial fare gratis; has a memory tenacious as a chief judge on matter of invitation, and a stomach capacious as a city alderman in doing honour to the feast; pretends to be a connoisseur in wines, although he never possessed above one bottle at a time in his cellaret, I should think, in the whole course of his life; talks about works of art and virtu as if Sir Joshua Reynolds had been his nurse--Claude his intimate acquaintance--or Praxiteles his great great grandfather. The fellow affects a most dignified contempt for the canaille, because, in truth, they never invite him to dinner--is on the free list of all the theatres, from having formerly been freely hiss'd upon their boards--a retired tragedy king on a small pension, with a republican stomach, who still enacts the starved apothecary at home, from penury, and liberally crams his voracious paunch, stuffing like Father Paul, when at the table of others. With these habits, he has just managed to scrape together some sixty pounds per annum, upon which, by good management, he contrives to live like an emperor; for instance, he keeps a regular book of ~215 invitations, numbers his friends according to the days of the year, and divides and subdivides them in accordance with their habits and pursuits, so that an unexpected invitation requires a reference to his journal: if you invite him for Saturday next, he will turn to his tablets, apologise for a previous engagement, run his eye eagerly down the column for an occasional absentee, and then invite himself for some day in the ensuing week, to which your politeness cannot fail to accede. You will meet him in London, Brighton, Bath, Cheltenham, and Margate during the fashionable periods; at all of which places he has his stated number of dinner friends, where his presence is as regularly looked for as the appearance of the swallow. Among the play men he is useful as a looker on, to make one at the table when they are thin of customers, or to drink a young one into a proper state for plucking: in other society he coins compliments for the fair