Unhappily, vile gold, or its representation or equivalent, has been, during many centuries, the sole medium through which the majority of mankind have supplied their wants, or ministered to their luxuries.  It is high time that a sage should arise to expound how the discerning few—­those who have the wit and the will (both must concur to the great end) may live—­live—­not like him who buys and balances himself by the book of the groveller who wrote “How to Live upon Fifty Pounds a Year”—­(O shame to manhood!)—­but live, I say—­“be free and merry”—­“laugh and grow fat”—­exchange the courtesies of life—­be a pattern of the “minor morals”—­and yet:  all this without a doit in bank, bureau, or breeches’ pocket.

I am that sage.  Let none deride.  Haply, I shall only remind some, but I may teach many.  Those that come to scoff, may perchance go home to prey.

Let no gentleman of the old school (for whom, indeed, my brief treatise is not designed) be startled when I advance this proposition:  That more discreditable methods are daily practised by those who live to get money, than are resorted to by those who without money are nevertheless under the necessity of living.  If this proposition be assented to—­as, in truth, I know not how it can be gainsaid,—­nothing need be urged in vindication of my art of free living.  Proceed I then at once.

Here is a youth of promise—­born, like Jaffier, with “elegant desires”—­one who does not agnize a prompt alacrity in carrying burdens—­one, rather, who recognizes a moral and physical unfitness for such, and indeed all other dorsal and manual operations—­one who has been born a Briton, and would not, therefore, sell his birthright for a mess of pottage; but, on the contrary, holds that his birthright entitles him to as many messes of pottage as there may be days to his mortal span, though time’s fingers stretched beyond the distance allotted to extreme Parr or extremest Jenkins.  “Elegant desires” are gratified to the extent I purpose treating of them, by handsome clothes—­comfortable lodgings—­good dinners.

1st. Of Handsome Clothes.—­Here, I confess, I find myself in some difficulty.  The man who knows not how to have his name entered in the day-book of a tailor, is not one who could derive any benefit from instruction of mine.  He must be a born natural.  Why, it comes by instinct.

2nd. Of Comfortable Lodgings.—­Easily obtained and secured.  The easiest thing in life.  But the wit without money must possess very little more of the former than of the latter, if he do not, even when snugly ensconced in one splendid suite of apartments, have his eye upon many others; for landladies are sometimes vexatiously impertinent, and novelty is desirable.  Besides, his departure may be (nay, often is) extremely sudden.  When in quest of apartments, I have found tarnished cards in the windows preferable.  They imply a length of vacancy of