the country systematically for a dozen of years, and sold the places and
reversions under him to the highest bidder. Boroughs were to be had
somewhat dearer than a pair of colours. And my Lord spent his spare
time--he had plenty of it--in fleecing the pigeons at White's and
Almack's. Here there was no honour, even amongst thieves. And young
gentlemen were hurried through Eton and Oxford, where they learned
to drink and swear and to call a main as well as to play tennis and
billiards and to write Latin, and were thrust into Brooks's before they
knew the difference in value between a farthing and a banknote: at
nineteen they were hardened rake, or accomplished men of the world, or
both. Dissipated noblemen of middle age like March and Sandwich, wits
and beaus and fine gentlemen like Selwyn and Chesterfield and Walpole,
were familiarly called by their first names by youngsters like Fox and
Carlisle and Comyn. Difference of age was no difference. Young Lord
Carlisle was the intimate of Mr. Selwyn, born thirty years before him.

And whilst I am speaking of intimacies, that short one which sprang up
between me and the renowned Charles Fox has always seemed the most
unaccountable: not on my part, for I fell a victim to him at once. Pen
and paper, brush and canvas, are wholly inadequate to describe the charm
of the man. When he desired to please, his conversation and the
expression of his face must have moved a temperament of stone itself.
None ever had more devoted friends or more ardent admirers. They saw his
faults, which he laid bare before them, but they settled his debts again
and again, vast sums which he lost at Newmarket and at Brooks's. And not
many years after the time of which I now write Lord Carlisle was paying
fifteen hundred a year on the sum he had loaned him, cheerfully denying
himself the pleasures of London as a consequence.

It was Mr. Fox who discovered for me my lodgings in Dover Street, vowing