in a breath ;-but the wars of whist were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational, antipathies of the great French and English nations.

candour, declared, that he thought there was darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratching no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recreations of that kind! She could not bear to have her noble occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, considered in that light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world to do,—and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards over a book.

Pope was her favourite author: his Rape of the Lock her favourite work. She once did me the favour to play over with me (with the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in that poem; and to explain to me how far it agreed with, and in what points it would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustrations were apposite and poignant; and I had the pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr. Bowles; but I suppose they came too late to be inserted among his ingenious notes upon that author.

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage— nothing superfluous. No flushes-that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up :-that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, without reference to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things.-Suits were soldiers, she would say, and must have an uniformity of array to distinguish them: but what should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, that never were

-She even wished that whist were more simple than it is; and, in my mind, would have stripped it of some appendages, which, in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit always trumps ?-Why two colours, when the mark of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them without it ?—

66

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she said, was showy to be marshalled- -never to take the field? and specious, and likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners-a thing which the constancy of whist abhors; the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille-absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his crown and garter give him no proper power above his brother-nobility of the Aces; the giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone; above all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably Prendre Vole,-to the triumph of which there refreshed with the variety. Man is not a is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, creature of pure reason-he must have his in the contingencies of whist;—all these, she senses delightfully appealed to. We see it would say, make quadrille a game of captiva- in Roman Catholic countries, where the tion to the young and enthusiastic. But music and the paintings draw in many to whist was the solider game: that was her worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsenword. It was a long meal; not, like qua-sualising would have kept out.-You yourself drille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the She despised the chance-started, capricious, and ever fluctuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel: perpetually changing postures and connexions; bitter foes to-day, sugared

have a pretty collection of paintings-but confess to me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, among those clear

ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable to that you have it in your power to experience most evenings over a well-arranged assortment of the court-cards ?-the pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession-the gay triumph-assuring scarlets-the contrast

ing deadly-killing sables-the 'hoary majesty repique of spades '-Pam in all his glory!—

"All these might be dispensed with; and with their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go on very well, pictureless. But the beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts and turneys in!-Exchange those delicately-turned ivory markers-(work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, -or as profanely slighting their true application as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out those little shrines for the goddess)—exchange them for little bits of leather (our ancestors' money) or chalk and a slate!"

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my logic; and to her approbation of my arguments on her favourite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought with him from Florence: -this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her death.

The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have kept with religious care; though she herself, to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say,-disputing with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce "Go"-or "That's a go." She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake) because she would not take advantage of the turn-up knave, which would have given it her, but which she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring "two for his heels." There is something extremely genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born.

the capot - they savoured (she thought) of affectation. But games for two, or even three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She would argue thus:-Cards are warfare: the ends are gain, with glory. But cards are war, in disguise of a sport: when single adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too close a fight; with spectators, it is not much bettered. No looker-on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money; he cares not for your luck sympathetically, or for your play.-Three are still worse; a mere naked war of every man against every man, as in cribbage, without league or alliance; or a rotation of petty and contradictory interests, a succession of heartless leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille.—But in square games (she meant whist), all that is possible to be attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the incentives of profit with honour, common to every species

though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, where the spectator is only feebly a participator. But the parties in whist are spectators and principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold-or even an interested-bystander witnesses it, but because your partner sympathises in the contingency. You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified; which divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) your glories. Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. War becomes a civil game. By such reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite pastime.

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at any game, where chance entered into the composition, for nothing. Piquet she held the best game at the cards Chance, she would argue-and here again, for two persons, though she would ridicule admire the subtlety of her conclusion ;the pedantry of the terms-such as pique-chance is nothing, but where something else

With great deference to the old lady's judgment in these matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my life, when playing at cards for nothing has even been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with my cousin Bridget-Bridget Elia.

depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot illusion, we are as mightily concerned as be glory. What rational cause of exultation those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. could it give to a man to turn up size ace a They are a sort of dream-fighting; much hundred times together by himself? or before ado; great battling, and little bloodshed; spectators, where no stake was depending? mighty means for disproportioned ends; -Make a lottery of a hundred thousand quite as diverting, and a great deal more tickets with but one fortunate number-and innoxious, than many of those more serious what possible principle of our nature, except games of life, which men play, without stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain esteeming them to be such.that number as many times successively, without a prize? Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money. She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played for I grant there is something sneaking in it; glory, they were a mere setting of one man's but with a tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, wit, his memory, or combination-faculty—when you are subdued and humble,-—you rather against another's; like a mock- are glad to put up with an inferior spring of engagement at a review, bloodless and profitless. She could not conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion of chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people playing I grant it is not the highest style of man at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist-I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battlewas stirring in the centre, would inspire she lives not, alas! to whom I should her with insufferable horror and ennui. apologise. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles, and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue, (and I think in this case justly,) were entirely misplaced and senseless. Those hard head-contests can in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and colour. A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper arena for such combatants.

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the better in something or other :-that this passion can scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game at cards that cards are a temporary illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the

action.

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as sick whist.

At such times, those terms which my old friend objected to, come in as something admissible.-I love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse me.

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted her)-(dare I tell thee, how foolish I am?)-I wished it might have lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play: I would be content to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the game was over: and, as I do not much relish appliances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing.

A CHAPTER ON EARS.

It is hard to stand alone in an age like this,-(constituted to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious combinations, I I even think that sentimentally I am dis- verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, posed to harmony. But organically I am since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut,) to incapable of a tune. I have been practising remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to "God save the King" all my life; whistling the magic influences of an art, which is said and humming of it over to myself in solitary to have such an especial stroke at soothing, corners; and am not yet arrived, they tell elevating, and refining the passions.—Yet,

rather than break the candid current of my confessions, I must avow to you, that I have received a great deal more pain than pleasure from this so cried-up faculty.

and be obliged to supply the verbal matter; to invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling mime - these are faint shadows of what I have undergone from a series of the ablest-executed pieces of this empty instrumental music.

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, sounds are nothing to the measured malice I have experienced something vastly lulling of music. The ear is passive to those single and agreeable:- afterwards followeth the strokes; willingly enduring stripes while it languor and the oppression.-Like that dishath no task to con. To music it cannot be appointing book in Patmos; or, like the passive. It will strive-mine at least will comings on of melancholy, described by spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze; Burton, doth music make her first insinualike an unskilled eye painfully poring upon ting approaches:-"Most pleasant it is to hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian such as are melancholy given to walk alone Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest water, by some brook side, and to meditate places of the crowded streets, to solace upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, myself with sounds, which I was not obliged which shall affect him most, amabilis insania, to follow, and get rid of the distracting and mentis gratissimus error. A most incomtorment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! parable delight to build castles in the air, to I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of honest common-life sounds;-and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my paradise.

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the purposes of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience!) immoveable, or affecting some faint emotion-till (as some have said, that our occupations in the next world will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms of the earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoyment; or like that

go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly imagine, they act, or that they see done. So delightsome these toys at first, they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years in such contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which are like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn from them-winding and unwinding themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their humours, until at the last the SCENE TURNS UPON A SUDDEN, and they being now habitated to such meditations and solitary places, can endure no company, can think of nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on a sudden and they can think of nothing else; Above all, those insufferable concertos, and continually suspecting, no sooner are their pieces of music, as they are called, do plague eyes open, but this infernal plague of melanand embitter my apprehension.-Words are choly seizeth on them, and terrifies their something; but to be exposed to an endless souls, representing some dismal object to battery of mere sounds; to be long a dying; their minds; which now, by no means, no to lie stretched upon a rack of roses; to labour, no persuasions, they can avoid, they keep up languor by unintermitted effort; to cannot be rid of, they cannot resist." pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon Something like this " SCENE TURNING" honey, to an interminable tedious sweet- I have experienced at the evening parties, ness; to fill up sound with feeling, and at the house of my good Catholic friend strain ideas to keep pace with it; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures for yourself; to read a book, all stops,

Party in a parlour

All silent, and all DAMNED.

Nov; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished of players, converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his