Metaphysics, and some of the material sciences, added new treasures to information more light and miscellaneous, and contributed to impart weight and dignity to a mind that might otherwise have become somewhat effeminate and frivolous.
His social habits, his clear sense, and benevolence of judgment, made him also an exquisite judge of all those indefinable nothings, or little things, that, formed into a total, become knowledge of the Great World.
I say the Great World--for of the world without the circle of the great, Cleveland naturally knew but little.

But of all that related to that subtle orbit in which gentlemen and ladies move in elevated and ethereal order, Cleveland was a profound philosopher.

It was the mode with many of his admirers to style him the Horace Walpole of the day.

But though in some of the more external and superficial points of character they were alike, Cleveland had considerably less cleverness, and infinitely more heart.
The late Mr.Maltravers, a man not indeed of literary habits but an admirer of those who were--an elegant, high-bred, hospitable _seigneur de province_--had been one of the earliest of Cleveland's friends--Cleveland had been his fag at Eton--and he found Hal Maltravers--( Handsome Hal!) had become the darling of the clubs, when he made his own _debut_ in society.

They were inseparable for a season or two--and when Mr.Maltravers married, and enamoured of country pursuits, proud of his old hall, and sensibly enough conceiving that he was a greater man in his own broad lands than in the republican aristocracy of London, settled peaceably at Lisle Court, Cleveland corresponded with him regularly, and visited him twice a year.