His highest triumph is to appear with the most wooden manners, as little polished as will suffice to avoid castigation; nay, to contrive even his civilities so, that they are as near as may be to affronts:--this indeed is the style of deportment which confers upon him the greatest celebrity. Instead of a noble, high-bred ease,--to have the courage to offend against every restraint of decorum: to invert the relation in which our sex stands to women, so that they appear the attacking, and he the passive or defensive party;--to treat his best friends, if they cease to have the stamp and authority of fashion, as if he did not know them,--"to cut them," as the technical phrase goes; to delight in the ineffably 'fade' jargon, and the affectation of his 'set;' and always to know what is 'the thing:'--these are pretty nearly the accomplishments which form a young 'lion' of the world of fashion. If he has, moreover, a remarkably pretty mistress, and if it has also happened to him to induce some foolish woman to sacrifice herself on the altar of fashion, and to desert husband and children for him, his reputation reaches its highest 'nimbus.' If, added to this, he spends a great deal of money, if he is young, and if his name is in the 'Peerage,' he can hardly fail to play a transient part; at any rate he possesses in full measure all the ingredients that go to make a Richelieu of our days. That his conversation consists only of the most trivial local jests and scandal, which he whispers into the ear of a woman in a large party, without deigning to remark that there is anybody in the room but himself and the happy object of his delicate attentions; that with men he can talk only of gambling or of sporting; that, except a few fashionable phrases which the shallowest head can the most easily retain, he is deplorably ignorant; that his awkward 'tournure' goes not beyond the 'nonchalance' of a plough-boy, who stretches himself at his length on the ale-house settle; and that his grace is very like that of a bear which has been taught to dance,--all this does not rob his crown of a single jewel.