The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

530 WAVERLE Y NOVELS.
and try if it may not even yet suggest some scheme of redemption and of
revenge."
With this manly resolution, he prosecuted his journey to London.
A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions-always in the wrongWas every thing by starts, but nothing long;
Who, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then, all for women, painting, fiddling, drinking;
Besides a thousand freaks that died in thinking.
DRYDEN.
WE must now transport the reader to the magnificent hotel in- -
Street, inhabited at this time by the celebrated George Villiers, Duke of
Buckirigham, whom Dryden has doomed to a painful immortality by the
few lines which we have prefixed to this chapter. Amid the gay and the
licentious of the laughing Court of Charles, the Duke was the most licentious and most gay; yet, while expending a princely fortune, a strong constitution, and excellent talents, in pursuit of frivolous pleasures, he nevertheless nourished deeper and more extensive designs; in which he only
failed from want of that fixed purpose and regulated perseverance essential
to all important enterprises, but particularly in politics.
It was long past noon; and the usual hour of the Duke's levee -if any
thing could be termed usual where all was irregular - had been long past.
His hall was filled with lackeys and footmen, in the most splendid liveries;
the interior apartments, with the gentlemen and pages of his household,
arrayed as persons of the first quality, and, in that respect, rather exceeding
than falling short of the Duke in personal splendour. But his antechamber,
in particular, might be compared to a gathering of eagles to the slaughter,
were not the simile too dignified to express that vile race, who, by a hundred
devices all tending to one common end, live upon the wants of needy greatness, or administer to the pleasures of summer-teeming luxury, or stimulate
the wild wishes of lavish and wasteful extravagance, by devising new modes
and fresh motives of profusion. There stood the projector, with his mysterious brow, promising unbounded wealth to whomsoever might choose to
furnish the small preliminary sum necessary to, change egg-shells into the
great arcanumn. There was Captain Seagull, undertaker for a foreign
settlement, with the map under his arm of Indian or American kingdoms,
beautiful as the primitive Edefi, waiting the bold occupants, for whom a
generous patron should equip two brigantines and a fly-boat. Thither came,
fast and frequent, the gamesters, in their different forms and calling. This,
light, young, gay in appearance, the thoughtless youth of wit and pleasure
-the pigeon rather than the rook-but at heart the same sly, shrewd, coldblooded calculator, as yonder old hard-featured professor of the same science,
whose eyes are grown dim with watching the dice at midnight; and whose
fingers are even now assisting his mental computation of chances and of
odds. The fine arts, too-I would it were otherwise-have their professors
amongst this sordid train. The poor poet, half ashamed, in spite of habit,
of the part which he is about to perform, and abashed by consciousness at
once of his base motive and his shabby black coat, lurks in yonder corner
for the favourable moment to offer his dedication. Much better attired, the