musician,--turned, like dying sunflowers to the sun, towards the pitying
smile of Sir Sedley Beaudesert. Add to these the general miscellaneous
multitude who "had heard of Sir Sedley's high character for
benevolence," and one may well suppose what a very costly reputation he
had set up. In fact, though Sir Sedley could not spend on what might
fairly be called "himself" a fifth part of his very handsome income, I
have no doubt that he found it difficult to make both ends meet at the
close of the year. That he did so, he owed perhaps to two rules which
his philosophy had peremptorily adopted. He never made debts, and he
never gambled. For both these admirable aberrations from the ordinary
routine of fine gentlemen I believe he was indebted to the softness of
his disposition. He had a great compassion for a wretch who was dunned.
"Poor fellow!" he would say, "it must be so painful to him to pass his
life in saying 'No.'" So little did he know about that class of
promisers,--as if a man dunned ever said 'No'! As Beau Brummell, when
asked if he was fond of vegetables, owned that he had once eat a pea, so
Sir Sedley Beaudesert owned that he had once played high at piquet. "I
was so unlucky as to win," said he, referring to that indiscretion, "and
I shall never forget the anguish on the face of the man who paid me.
Unless I could always lose, it would be a perfect purgatory to play."

Now nothing could be more different in their kinds of benevolence than
Sir Sedley and Mr. Trevanion. Mr. Trevanion had a great contempt for
individual charity. He rarely put his hand into his purse,--he drew a
great check on his bankers. Was a congregation without a church, or a
village without a school, or a river without a bridge, Mr. Trevanion set
to work on calculations, found out the exact sum required by an
algebraic x--y, and paid it as he would have paid his butcher. It must
be owned that the distress of a man whom he allowed to be deserving, did
not appeal to him in vain. But it is astonishing how little he spent in