neither of them had sufficient sense to be proud of the greatest
intellectual ornament of their race, the author of 'Tom Jones;' but as
our hero was dead before the humourist was born, it is not fair to
conjecture what he might have thought on the subject.

It does not appear that very much is known of this great gem of the race
of Hapsburg. He had the misfortune to be very handsome, and the folly to
think that his face would be his fortune: it certainly stood him in good
stead at times, but it also brought him into a lamentable dilemma.

His father was not rich, and sent his son to the Temple to study laws
which he was only fitted to break. The young Adonis had sense enough to
see that destiny did not beckon him to fame in the gloom of a musty law
court, and removed a little further up to the Thames, and the more
fashionable region of Scotland Yard. Here, where now Z 300 repairs to
report his investigations to a Commissioner, the young dandies of
Charles II.'s day strutted in gay doublets, swore hasty oaths of choice
invention, smoked the true Tobago from huge pipe-bowls, and ogled the
fair but not too bashful dames who passed to and fro in their chariots.
The court took its name from the royalties of Scotland, who, when they
visited the South, were there lodged, as being conveniently near to
Whitehall Palace. It is odd enough that the three architects, Inigo
Jones, Vanbrugh, and Wren, all lived in this yard.

It was not to be supposed that a man who could so well appreciate a
handsome face and well-cut doublet as Charles II. should long overlook
his neighbour, Mr. Robert Fielding, and in due course the Beau, who had
no other diploma, found himself in the honourable position of a justice
of the peace.