other bed for Mrs. Villars, and see that none lie there.' I told my master it was done. Mrs. Villars, in the meantime, put the lady to bed. When I came down to tell them of it I saw the lady's clothes on a stool in the chamber, and Mrs. Villars folding them up and laying them in another room. I then lighted Mrs. Villars to bed, and then went to bed myself. In the morning I was called to make a fire. I then perceived Mr. Fielding and this lady in bed together. The fire being made, I was ordered to get a hackney-coach. Mrs. Villars dressed the lady hastily, and she was carried away in the hackney-coach."

Under what circumstances Fielding was made aware of the impudent manner in which he had been duped, we have unfortunately not been made acquainted. As his marriage, however, with the Duchess of Cleveland took place within little more than a fortnight, the dénouement could not long have been delayed. The ladies, on their part, grew, as might have been expected, exorbitant in their demands for money, to which Fielding not only turned a deaf ear, but insisted on his presents being returned. Their repeated visits to Cleve

land House must have caused him not a little annoyance. At last, apparently wearied out with their importunities, he sent for Mrs. Villars, and, on her refusing to deny his marriage with Mrs. Wadsworth, not only gave her a severe beating, but told her if she still persisted in declining to

comply with his demands, he would slit her nose, and "get two blacks, one of whom should hold her on his back, and the other break her bones." Mrs. Wadsworth was treated with scarcely more consideration. On her presenting herself at Cleveland House to claim him as her lawful husband, he beat her with a stick and made her nose bleed.

Fielding was found guilty at his trial and sentenced to be burnt in the hand, though he was afterward pardoned by Queen Anne. On the 23d of May, 1707, his marriage with the Duchess of Cleveland was annulled in the Arches Court, and from henceforth we discover no mention of either the fortune or the name of Robert Fielding.

CHAPTER V.

BEAU WILSON.

Beau Wilson's Mysterious Rise from Poverty to AffluenceServes a Campaign in Flanders - Is Broken for Cowardice, and Returns to England with Forty Shillings in His Pocket - His Extraordinary Show of Wealth Immediately after His Return - Various Conjectures on the Subject - Extract from Madame Dunois's Memoirs - Her Belief That Wilson Owed His Good Fortune to the Favour of the Duchess of Cleveland - Wilson Engaged in a Duel with Law, and Killed - Extract from Evelyn's Diary-Law Tried and Condemned - His Escape from Prison His Death at Venice in 1729.

THE preceding memoir of Beau Fielding throws so curious a light on the manners and customs of the last century that we are tempted to introduce the portrait of another individual of the same stamp, who, though he figured a few years previously to his brother in dissipation, yet resembles him not a little in the ephemeral splendour of his existence, and the precarious sources from which his magnificence was derived.

The person known as Beau Wilson, whose mysterious rise from extreme poverty to the greatest affluence afforded our ancestors so wide a field for curiosity and conjecture, was a younger brother,

for whom his friends had purchased a commission in the army. He served a campaign with the army in Flanders, but having been early broken for cowardice, as some have asserted, set out on his return to England with the small sum of forty shillings, which some charitable friend had lent him to pay the expenses of his passage.

This obscure and apparently degraded individual had hardly made his appearance in the metropolis more than a few weeks when, according to a contemporary, "he appeared the brightest star in the hemisphere; his coaches, saddle, hunting, racehorses, equipage, dress, and table being the admiration of the world." Curiosity was eagerly at work to discover the secret source of this magnificence. It was questioned whether such extraor dinary wealth could be derived from any of the fair sex, for there were few able to sustain him in such lavish expenditure. The manner in which he spent each day could always be accounted for, and, even when intoxicated, he was invariably on his guard against impertinent inquiries. Some believed that he had discovered the philosopher's stone; others affirmed that he had robbed a mail from Holland of a large quantity of rough diamonds; while another report was prevalent that he was supported by the Jews, though the motive of their liberality does not appear.

Madame Dunois says, in her memoirs: "He never played, or but inconsiderably; entertained

with profuseness all who visited him; himself drank liberally; but in all hours, as well sober as otherwise, he kept a strict guard upon his words, though several were either employed, by the curiosity of others or their own, to take him at his looser moments, and persuade him to reveal his secret; but he so inviolably preserved it that even their guesses were but at random, and without probability or foundation. He was not known to be an admirer of ladies, though he might doubtless have had the good fortune to have pleased, his person being no ways despicable. What adds to our surprise is that he was at all times to be found, and ever with some of his people, seemingly open in conversation, free from spleen or chagrin ; in a word, he had that settled air, as if he was assured his good fortune would for ever continue. One of his friends advised him to purchase an estate whilst he had money. Mr. Wilson thanked him, and said that he did not forget the future in the present; he was obliged to him for his counsel, but whilst he lived it would be ever thus, for he was always certain to be master of such a sum of money."

Such is the well-known history of Beau Wilson. Madame Dunois, however, informs us that he unquestionably owed his good fortune to the weakness of a certain great lady, by which insinuation the Duchess of Cleveland is evidently meant. The duchess, it would seem, seeing him stretched