ABSTRACT
Lord Danesforte inherited from his ancestors an immense fortune; and was one of those who seem, by the consent of their cotemporaries, to be the acknowledged leaders of fashion, and arbiters of taste. His houses, his equipages, his horses, his mistresses, his dinners, were the theme of the day; and had for some years made a conspicuous figure in those fleeting annals, which give, in the eyes of trifling imbecillity, a temporary consequence to dissipation and vice. He had received from nature a good understanding, and an handsome person: but he sacrificed the former in becoming the slave of opinion; and his intemperance had at the age of seven-and-twenty robbed his person of all the lightness, grace, and activity of youth, while his constitution was proportionably impaired. He plunged early into every species of debauchery, to shew his spirit; and it was now become an invincible habit. But that facility of gratification which his great fortune gave him, made even his pleasures satiate and disgust him; and amid the luxuries with which he was surrounded, some new pursuit, some project which might pique and animate by the difficulty of success, was ever become necessary to his existence. When he had no such scheme before him, he hurried from place to place, weary of himself; and was now very slightly gratified by that species of fame, which his morals, his health, and much of his fortune, had been sacrificed to obtain.
