diligence is no longer left to the novelist, while,
as to the old post-chaise of which he used to be
so fond, he is turned clean out of it, and left
sitting on his portmanteau at the door of a railway
station, with a porter only waiting till he
gets up, to stick a label on his luggage.

And then the Duello—there is a loss! What
a means of getting rid of the bad character, and
bringing the hero out in his true colours, was
that hostile meeting at Wormwood Scrubs.
"After what has occurred," says Calverley, in
his calm clear voice, "but one course is left to
persons calling themselves gentlemen." Then
was the meeting between the seconds, themselves
intimate friends but suspending their intimacy
during the progress of this "unhappy affair," the
arrangement of the place where the duel should
be fought, and the hour when it could come off
with the least chance of discovery. Then, came
the scene in the apartments of the courageous
Calverley, at two in the morning sealing a letter
to his beloved, and enclosing a miniature—the
miniature is obsolete too, now, mercy befriend
us! —and a lock of his richly curling hair. He
is perfectly calm, and, having finished his preparations,
lies down to take a few hours' sleep,
before his friend the colonel arrives at 5.30 (I
mean half-past five, 5.30 was unknown in those
glorious days), and carries him off to the field.
The cloak too! He was shrouded in a cloak
to escape observation. That garment—dark
blue, with a cape, with velvet collar, and with
cords and tassels like a curtain—has gone the
way of the miniature, and of the case of duelling-pistols
which used to be concealed under its
ample folds. When in the early morning the
party assembles on the Scrubs, the different
members of it are all covered up in cloaks, except
the surgeon, who wears a great-coat with the
pockets full of surgical instruments, and lint.
On the removal of his mantle the bad character
is found to be still habited in the evening
costume which he had worn the night
before. The hero is dressed in a plain black
surtout, buttoned closely up to the throat, and
wears an appearance of entire calmness, while
the looks of his opponent are ghastly and haggard
in the last degree.

Who ever hears of duels in these days?

We were talking but now of the miniature.
What an important part the miniature has
played in its time. How it has been gazed at
through tears, addressed in long speeches,
sighed over. How it has been transmitted by
faithful hands, and has administered comfort,
and how it has been delivered into unfaithful
hands and has led to the most disastrous discoveries
conceivable—which was the more extraordinary,
because I don't believe it was at all
a good likeness, or likely to be recognised by
any human creature. What a small head the subject
of that miniature always had, what long and
sloping shoulders. How his hair was piled up—
and so was hers, if it was a lady's miniature—
on the top of the head, and gracefully arranged
to conceal the forehead and the corners of the
eyes. And what a complexion the miniature
had, what lilies and roses for the ladies' cheeks,
and what blue veins about their temples and
their soda-water-bottle necks!

No more miniatures now, and the modern
fictionist must pile up his effects as best he can,
with the aid of cartes de visite and pistol-grams.

I cannot enumerate all our losses; but what
a fearful thing it is to be no longer able to fall
back upon the gaming-table as a last resource.
We have lost the gambler, the man with pale set
features, with dishevelled hair, and disordered
dress. His trembling wife no longer sits up for
him all through the long hours of the night and
early morning. Nay, the occasional gambler,
even, is gone from our grasp; the man who,
having lost his patrimony, rushes out to the
hell in St. James's-street and stakes his all upon
one last chance. What a gallant rattle that was
of the dice-box as it swept round our desperado's
head. "It fell, and Delisle was a beggar!"

Where is the gaming now? I don't know
where to ruin myself. Crockford's has ceased to
exist, or is turned into an honourable eating-house.
The rattle of the dice is heard there no
longer. It is succeeded by the rattle of the knives
and forks. If one of the desperate characters of
the "good old times," awakening from a trance,
were to rush off to that once terrible abode of
excitement and crime, he would now be encountered
by a harmless necessary waiter, who would
inquire whether he "would please to take soup
or fish," or whether he would content himself
with "a cut off the jint."

The Legitimate Novel had its standard forms
of expression. Here is a very favourite phrase:
"Poor, but scrupulously clean." Who was it
that first put this hideously absurd combination
of incongruous words together? You might as
well describe some piece of drapery as red, but
inconceivably green, or speak of a house as small,
but immeasurably large, or of a friend's character
as deceitful, but scrupulously sincere. Had the
inventor of the phrase ever paid a washing-bill ?
Had he ever had a shirt "got up?" Surely the
phrase must have come originally, either from a
millionnaire who never inspected a washing-bill,
or from a Capuchin Friar who never received one.

When the virtuous family, tyrannised over and
deprived of their rights by a wicked relative, got
into difficulties and retired to "a small town in
the west of England," they always distinguished
themselves by being poor "but scrupulously
clean." Then it was that you heard of their
frugal meal being spread upon a "board"—an
inconvenient article of furniture, by-the-by, for
the purpose—covered with a cloth of "snowy
whiteness." The covering of that same board
with a cloth of snowy whiteness, means that this
distressed family indulged in seven tablecloths
(independent of accidents) per week. Similarly,
that inevitable "white dress—that simple white
dress of the heroine. There was a pathetic chapter
comparing the past time when she was decked in
silks and satins, with the present time, when, in
her reduced circumstances, she contents herself
with that plain white robe, so pure, so touching
in its simplicity. In the name of the united clear-starchers