But Mr. Greville, the old friend and early patron of the Doctor, he now never saw, save by accident; and rarely as that occurred, it was oftener than could be wished; so querulous was that gentleman grown, from ill-luck in his perilous pursuits; so irascible within, and so supercilious without; assuming to all around him a sort of dignified distance, that bordered, at least, upon universal disdain.

The world seemed completely in decadence with this fallen gentleman; and the writhings of long suffocated mortification, from sinking his fine spirits and sickening his gay hopes, began to engender a morbid irritation, that was ready, upon every fancied provocation, to boil into vehemence of passion, or burst into the bitterness of sarcastic reproach.

This state of things had come upon him unconsciously; though to the observations of his friends its advance had been glaringly evident.

It was not that he wanted, at large, foresight for events to be rationally expected, or judgment to dictate how they should be met: but his foresight, his sense of right, were all for his neighbours! for himself—he had none. To all without he had a nearly microscopic vision; to all within he was blind; as the eye sees every thing—but itself.

“Experience,” Mr. Crisp was wont to say, “is rarely of any use collaterally; it does not become efficient till it has personally been bought. And it must be paid for, also,” he would energetically add, “to be well remembered!”

But so torpid was the infatuation of self-security in Mr. Greville, that pertinaciously he frequented the same seductive haunts, and mechanically adhered to the same dangerous society, till the knowledge of his errors and their mischief was forced upon him by his creditors.

Angered and disgusted, he then, in gloomy sullenness, retired from public view; and lived a rambling, unsettled sort of life, as ill at ease with his family as with the world, from the wounds he habitually inflicted, and occasionally suffered, through the irritability of his argumentative commerce.