though Walpole voted it dull: "Whist has spread a universal opium over the whole nation." Again: "The kingdom of the Dull is come upon earth. . . The only token of this new kingdom is a woman riding on a beast, which is the mother of abominations, and the name in the forehead is Whist; and the four-and-twenty elders and the woman, and the whole town, do nothing but play with this beast."* Whist had a long reign. In 1749 Walpole writes: "As I passed over the green [Richmond], I saw Lord Bath, Lord Lonsdale, and half-a-dozen more of the White's club, sauntering at the door of a house which they have taken there, and come to every Saturday and Sunday to play at whist. You will naturally ask why they can't play at whist in London on those days as well as on the other five? Indeed I can't tell you, except that it is so established a fashion to go out of town at the end of the week, that people do go, though it be only into another town."+ Ministers of state, and princes who had something to do, were ready to relieve the cares of business by gambling, as much as other people gamed to vary their idleness. Lord Sandwich "goes once or twice a-week to hunt with the Duke [Cumberland]; and as the latter has taken a turn of gaming, Sandwich, to make his court-and fortune-carries a box and dice in his pocket; and so they throw a main, whenever the hounds are at fault, upon every green hill, and *Horace Walpole to Mann. Horace Walpole to Mann, June 4, 1749. under every green tree." Five years later, at a magnificent ball and supper at Bedford House, the Duke "was playing at hazard with a great heap of gold before him: somebody said he looked like the prodigal son and the fatted calf, both."† Amongst the royal and noble gamblers, swindlers par excellence sometimes found their way. There was a Sir William Burdett, whose name had the honour of being inscribed in the betting-room at White's as the subject of a wager that he would be the first baronet that would be hanged. He and a lady, “dressed foreign as a princess of the house of Brandenburg," cheated Lord Castledurrow and Captain Rodney out of a handsome sum at faro. The noble victim met the Baronet at Ranelagh, and thus apostrophised him: "Sir William, here is the sum I think I lost last night; since that, I have heard that you are a professed pickpocket, and therefore desire to have no farther acquaintance with you." The Baronet took the money with a respectful bow, and then asked his Lordship the further favour to set him down at Buckingham Gate, and without waiting for an answer whipped into the chariot. No doubt the Baronet prospered and was smiled upon. Walpole tells another story of a hanger-on upon the gaming-tables, which has a dash of the tragic in it: "General Wade was at a low gaming-house, and had a very fine snuff-box, *Horace Walpole to Mann, January 31, 1750. which on a sudden he missed. Everybody denied having taken it he insisted on searching the company. He did: there remained only one man, who had stood behind him, but refused to be searched, unless the General would go into another room alone with him. There the man told him that he was born a gentleman, was reduced, and lived by what little bets he could pick up there, and by fragments which the waiters sometimes gave him. At this moment I have half a fowl in my pocket; I was afraid of being exposed: here it is! Now, sir, you may search me.' Wade was so struck that he gave the man a hundred pounds."* The genius "The of gambling might be painted, like Garrick, between the tragic and the comic muse. We turn over the page, and comedy again presents herself, in an attitude that looks very like the hoyden step of her half-sister, Farce: "Jemmy Lumley last week had a party of whist at his own house: the combatants, Lucy Southwell, that curtseys like a bear, Mrs. Prijean, and a Mrs. Mackenzy. They played from six in the evening till twelve next day; Jemmy never winning one rubber, and rising a loser of two thousand pounds. How it happened I know not, nor why his suspicions arrived so late, but he fancied himself cheated, and refused to pay. However, the bear had no share in his evil surmises on the contrary, a day or two afterwards, he promised a dinner at Hampstead to Lucy and her virtuous sister. As he went to the rendezvous Horace Walpole to Mann, January 10, 1750. his chaise was stopped by somebody, who advised him not to proceed. Yet, no whit daunted, he advanced. In the garden he found the gentle conqueress, Mrs. Mackenzy, who accosted him in the most friendly manner. After a few compliments, she asked him if he did not intend to pay her. 'No, indeed, I shan't, I shan't; your servant, your servant.' 'Shan't you?' said the fair virago; and taking a horsewhip from beneath her hoop, she fell upon him with as much vehemence as the Empress-Queen would upon the King of Prussia, if she could catch him alone in the garden at Hampstead."* There was deep philosophy in a saying of George Selwyn's, when a waiter at Arthur's Club House was taken up for robbery: "what a horrid idea he will give of us to the people in Newgate!" It may be doubted whether the gentlemen-highwaymen who peopled Newgate at that era had a much looser code of morals than some of the great folks they pillaged. The people of London got frightened about an earthquake in 1750, and again in 1756. There was a slight shock in the first of those years, which set the haunters of White's furiously betting whether it was an earthquake or the blowing-up of the powder-mills at Hounslow. Bishop Sherlock and Bishop Secker endeavoured to frighten the people into piety; but the visitors at Bedford House, who had supped and stayed late, went about the town knocking at doors, and *Horace Walpole to Montagu, May 14, 1761. bawling in the watchman's note, "Past four o'clock and a dreadful earthquake." Some of the fashionable set got frightened, however, and went out of town; and three days before the exact day on which the great earthquake was prophesied to happen, the crowd of coaches passing Hyde Park Corner with whole parties removing into the country was something like the procession already described to Vauxhall. "Several women have made earthquake gowns-that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night. These are of the more courageous. One woman, still more heroic, is come to town on purpose; she says all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them. But what will you think of Lady Catherine Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway, who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back-I suppose to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish ?"* When the rulers of the nation on such an occasion, or any other occasion of public terror, took a fit of hypocrisy and ordered a general fast, the gambling-houses used to be filled with senators who had a day of leisure upon their hands. Indifference to public opinion, as well as a real insensibility, drew a line between the people of fashion and the middle classes. Walpole tells a story which is characteristic enough to be true, though he hints that it was invented :-"They *Horace Walpole to Mann, April 2, 1750. |