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His dress was equally creditable to his tailor and his valet, “rather rich than gaudy,” (as Miss Byron said of Sir Charles Grandison,) except in the grand article of the waistcoat, a brocade brode of resplendent lustre, which combined both qualities. His shoes were bright with the new French blacking, and his jewellery, rings, studs, brooches, and chains (for he wore two, that belonging to his watch, and one from which depended a pair of spectacles, folded so as to resemble an eye-glass,) were of the finest material and the latest fashion.

In short, our new acquaintance was an old beau. He was not, however, that which an old beau so frequently is, an old bachelor. On the contrary, he spoke of Mrs. Thompson and her parties, and her box at the opera (he did not say on what tier) with some unction, and mentioned with considerable pride a certain Mr. Browne, who had lately married his eldest daughter; Browne, be it observed, with an e, as his name (I beg his pardon for having misspelt it) was Thomson without the p; there being I know not what of dignity in the absence of the consonant, and the presence of the vowel, though mute. We soon found that both he and Mr. Browne lent these illustrious names to half a score of clubs, from the Athenaeum downward. We also gathered from his conversation that he resided somewhere in Gloucester Place or Devonshire Place, in Wimpole Street or Harley Street, (I could not quite make out in which of those respectable double rows of houses his domicile was situate,) and that he contemplated with considerable jealousy the manner in which the tide of fashion had set in to the south-west, rolling its changeful current round the splendid mansions of Belgrave Square, and threatening to leave this once distinguished quartier as bare and open to the jesters of the silver-fork school as the ignoble precincts of Bloomsbury. It was a strange mixture of feeling. He was evidently upon the point of becoming ashamed of a neighbourhood of which he had once been not a little proud. He spoke slightingly of the Regent’s Park, and eschewed as much as possible all mention of the Diorama and the Zoological, and yet seemed pleased and flattered, and to take it as a sort of personal compliment, when Mrs. Dunbar professed her fidelity to the scene of her youthful gaiety, Cavendish Square and its environs.

He had been, it seemed, an old friend of the General’s, and had coine down partly to see him, and partly for the purpose of a day’s fishing, although, by some mistake in the wording of his letter, his host, who did not expect him until the next week, happened to be absent. This, however, had troubled him little. He saw the General often enough in town. Angling was his first object in the country; and as the fine piece of water in the park (famous for its enormous pike) remained in statu quo, and Edward Dunbar was ready to accompany and assist him, he had talked the night before of nothing but his flies and his rods, and boasted, in speaking of Ireland, the classic land of modern fishermen, of what he meant to do, and what he had done–of salmon caught in the wilds of Connemara, and trout drawn out amid the beauties of Killarney. Fishing exploits, past and future, formed the only theme of his conversation during his first evening at the Hall. On that which we spent in his company, nothing could be farther from his inclination than any allusion, however remote, to his beloved sport, He had been out in the morning, and we at last extorted from Edward Dunbar, upon a promise not to hint at the story until the hero of the adventure should be fairly off, that, after trying with exemplary patience all parts of the mere for several hours without so much as a nibble, a huge pike, as Mr. Thompson asserted, or, as Edward suspected, the root of a tree, had caught fast hold of the hook. If pike it were, the fish had the best of the battle, for, in a mighty jerk on one side or the other (the famous Dublin tackle maintaining its reputation, and holding as firm as the cordage of a man-of-war,) the unlucky angler had been fairly pulled into the water, and soused over head and ears. How his valet contrived to reinstate his coeffure, unless, indeed, he travelled with a change of wigs, is one of those mysteries of an old beau’s toilet which pass female comprehension.