THOUSAND MATTERS.--THE DECLENSION OF THE "SUI PROFUSUS" INTO THE "ALIENI
APPETENS."

There was, in the day I now refer to, a certain house in Chesterfield
Street, Mayfair, which few young men anxious for the eclat of society
passed without a wish for the acquaintance of the inmate. To that small
and dingy mansion, with its verandahs of dusky green, and its blinds
perpetually drawn, there attached an interest, a consideration, and a
mystery. Thither, at the dusk of night, were the hired carriages of
intrigue wont to repair, and dames to alight, careful seemingly of
concealment, yet wanting, perhaps, even a reputation to conceal. Few, at
the early hours of morn, passed that street on their way home from some
glittering revel without noticing some three or four chariots in
waiting;--or without hearing from within the walls the sounds of
protracted festivity. That house was the residence of a man who had never
done anything in public, and yet was the most noted personage in Society
in early life, the all-accomplished Lovelace! in later years mingling
the graces with the decayed heart and the want of principle of a Grammont.
Feared, contemned, loved, hated, ridiculed, honoured, the very genius, the
very personification, of a civilized and profligate life seemed embodied
in Augustus Saville. Hitherto we have spoken of, let us now describe him.

Born to the poor fortunes and equivocal station of cadet in a noble but
impoverished house, he had passed his existence in a round of lavish, but
never inelegant, dissipation. Unlike other men, whom youth, and money,
and the flush of health, and aristocratic indulgence, allure to follies,
which shock the taste as well as the morality of the wise, Augustus
Saville had never committed an error which was not varnished by grace, and
limited by a profound and worldly discretion. A systematic votary of
pleasure--no woman had ever through him lost her reputation or her sphere;