month to pointing out the greatest rogue in
company;—but who ever heard of the poodle
pegging more holes than he is entitled
to at cribbage, or of the elephant hiding four
kings in his trunk!

I think it is Mr. Robson, who in the
most excruciatingly humorous portion of
Vilikins and his Dinah says—"This is
not a comic song." Very widely
paraphrasing the dictum of that admirable
comic actor, I may say that this is not an
historical essay on the subject of gaming.
Else might I discourse to you on the history
of playing cards: how they were invented
for the delassement of the poor old imbecile
Charles the Sixth of France; how Cardinal
Mazarin played at cards on his death-bed;
how an edict of proscription written on the
back of a nine of diamonds by the Duke of
Cumberland, caused that sanguinary card to
be ever afterwards known as the "curse of
Scotland"; how at a fatal card party the
Prince of Talleyrand, playing at bouillotte
with the Duchesse de Luynes, suddenly laid
down his cards at three o'clock in the
morning, and in his cold impassible voice
asked: "Has the Prince de Condé any other
children save the Duc d'Enghien?"—how
the Duchess was astonished, and wished to
know why he asked such a question, seeing
that he must know that Condé had no other
child but Enghien. How the Prince de
Talleyrand, replacing his watch in his pocket,
answered, still coldly and impassibly, "Then
the house of Condé is finished"; which
indeed it was, for in that very hour and minute
the last of the Condés was being shot to
death in the ditch of Vincennes. It shall be
my task rather, in my rambling way, to
touch upon a few of the social aspects of
play, its votaries and its dupes.

Play is no longer one of our public shames.
The ulcer has been banished from the
epidermis, but it is an inward sore now, and
not less deadly. The demon of gambling is
scotched, not killed. He is hydra-headed,
and no Hercules has yet been found provided
with a red-hot iron to sear the first trunk
while he severs the second head. Drive the
devil of the dice-box from Westminster, and
you will find him walking up and down,
and going to and fro in Southwark. Chase
him from the hazard-table, and he takes
refuge in the Stock Exchange or the "Corner."
He is not to be exorcised, to be laid in the
Red Sea, to be eradicated by chloride of
lime, fumigation, ventilation, or fire. Sweep
the streets clean as a Dutch village from
Play; he mocks at you from the housetops.
Drive in the gaming-house door with sledgehammers,
Play leers at you from the second-floor
window round the corner. Like his
master, Satan, Play has been headlong
hurled

With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition.

Yet he lies still floating "many a rood"
upon the molten lake of avarice and
sensuality,—his brother Death—his sister Sin.
Yet does he soar on evil-flapping wings, and
hover about the scenes of his former overt
triumphs. Look at St. James's.

If I had with me that young Greek gentleman
of a few thousand years ago—Blank
Anacharsis, Esquire—whose travels among
the Scythians must be in the recollections
of my readers, what homilies might I not
deduce for his benefit from the consideration
of the parish of St. James's Westminster,
in a Play point of view. See,
Anacharsis, would I say, shade thine eyes
with thine hand, standing in Piccadilly, that
thoroughfare of ambiguous etymology, even
at the corner of Arlington Street, and look
down the avenue of palaces, called by men
Saint James's Street. Every street in London
has a character. There are wealthy
streets, starving streets, pious streets, comic
streets, mortuary streets, proud streets,
slavish streets, drunken streets, thievish
streets, shameful streets, shameless streets.
That street you are looking down,
Anacharsis, is pre-eminently the most gambling
and the most fashionable street in Europe.
Adduce not Bond Street: it had but a
transitory, ephemeral, factitious glory, and that
has departed. Set no store by Regent Street:
its broad pavement is disfigured by bearded
foreigners, by fiddlers with embroidered
shirts, by milliners out for an airing. St.
James's Street is the home of fashion and
play, and their head-quarters. It has been so
this hundred and fifty years. The first
gentleman in Europe has lounged with Dick
Sheridan in the bow-windows of its clubs,
and made sportive bets upon passing
crockery-girls. In those dull, dingy houses
thousands of pounds have changed hands
between the great and noble of the
land, in bets upon the Duke of
Marlborough's campaigns, the South Sea Bubble,
the Pretender's march to Derby, the trial of
Admiral Byng, the sex of the Chevalier
d'Eon, the return of Bonaparte from Elba,
the result of Queen Caroline's trial, the
winner of the Derby, the duration of the
Whig Ministry, the loss of the President, the
favourite for the Leger, the battles of the
Sutlej, and the fate (too well known, now,
alas!) of the Arctic Navigators. In those
club-houses, lords with stars and lords with
garters have played at whist vingt-et-un, écarté,
loo, Pope Joan, piquet, cribbage, spadille,
manille and basto, moro, blind hookey,
roulette, rouge-et-noir, boston, bouillotte,
lansquenet, tric-trac, put, all fours,pea-beck,
beggar-my-neighbour, Strip-Jack-
naked (my lord too, naked, often), shove-
halfpenny, odd or even, backgammon—nay,
have even descended to cut cards for
guineas, to toss half-crowns in a hat, to spit
upon a window-pane (?) for steaks, to bet
upon a beetle race, the colour of a horse, the