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Philosophers may argue, and moralists preach, the former against the folly, and the latter against the wickedness of gambling, but, as may be expected, their remonstrances pass but as a gentle breeze over the outwardly placid ocean of play, causing the fishes--the familiars of the gambling world--languidly to raise their heads, and mildly to inquire: 'What's all that row about?' Gambling is one of the strongest passions in the human breast, and no warning, no exhibition of fatal examples, will ever stop the indulgence in the excitement it procures. It assumes many phases; in all men have undergone disastrous experiences, and yet they repeat the dangerous and usually calamitous experiments. In no undertaking has so much money been lost as in mining; prizes have occasionally been drawn, but at such rare intervals as to be cautions rather than encouragements; and yet, even at the present day, with all the experience of past failures, sanguine speculators fill empty shafts with their gold, which is quickly fished up by the greedy promoters.

Some of the now most respectable West End clubs originally were only gambling-hells. They are not so now; but the improvement this would seem to imply is apparent only. Our manners have improved, but not our morals; the table-legs wear frilled trousers now, but the legs are there all the same, even the blacklegs. But it is the past more than the present we wish to speak of.

Early in the last century gaming was so prevalent that in one night's search the Leet's Jury of Westminster discovered, and afterwards presented to the justices, no fewer than thirty-five gambling-houses. The Society for the Reformation of Manners published a statement of their proceedings, by which it appeared that in the year beginning with December 1, 1724, to the same date in 1725, they had prosecuted 2,506 persons for keeping disorderly and gaming houses; and for thirty-four years the total number of their prosecutions amounted to the astounding figure of 91,899. In 1728 the following note was issued by the King's order: 'It having been represented to his Majesty that such felons and their accomplices are greatly encouraged and harboured by persons keeping night-houses ... and that the gaming-houses ... much contribute to the corruption of the morals of those of an inferior rank ... his Majesty has commanded me to recommend it, in his name, in the strongest manner to the Justices of the Peace to employ their utmost care and vigilance in the preventing and suppressing of these disorders, etc.'

There were thus many attempts at controlling the conduct of the lower orders, but the gentry set them a bad example. The Cocoa-Tree Club, the Tory chocolate-house of Queen Anne's reign, at No. 64, St. James's Street, was a regular gambling-hell. In the evening of a Court Drawing-room in 1719, a number of gentlemen had a dispute over hazard at that house; the quarrel became general, and, as they fought with their swords, three gentlemen were mortally wounded, and the affray was only ended by the interposition of the Royal Guards, who were compelled to knock the parties down with the butt-ends of their muskets indiscriminately, as entreaties and commands were disregarded. Walpole, in his correspondence, relates: 'Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa-Tree, the difference of which amounted to ?180,000. Mr. O'Birne, an Irish gamester, had won ?100,000 of a young Mr. Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate by his elder brother's death. O'Birne said: "You can never pay me." "I can," said the youth; "my estate will sell for the debt." "No," said O'Birne, "I will win ?10,000; you shall throw for the odd ?90,000." They did, and Harvey won.' It is not on record whether he took the lesson to heart. The house was, in 1746, turned into a club, but its reputation was not improved; bribery, high play, and foul play continued to be common in it.

At Tom's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, there was playing at piquet, and the club consisting of seven hundred noblemen and gentlemen, many of whom belonged to the gay society of that day , we may be sure the play was high.

Arthur's Club, in St. James's Street, so named after its founder , was a famous gambling centre in its day. A nobleman of the highest position and influence in society was detected in cheating at cards, and after a trial, which did not terminate in his favour, he died of a broken heart. This happened in 1836.

The Union, which was founded in this century, was a regular gambling-club. It was first held at what is now the Ordnance Office, Pall Mall, and subsequently in the house afterwards occupied by the Bishop of Winchester.

In the early days of this century the most notorious gambling-club was Crockford's, in St. James's Street. Crockford originally was a fishmonger, and occupied the old bulk-shop west of Temple Bar. But, having made money by betting, 'he gave up,' as a recent writer on 'The Gambling World' says, 'selling soles and salmon, and went in for catching fish, confining his operations to gudgeons and flat-fish'; or, in other words, he established a gambling-house, first by taking over Watier's old club-house, where he set up a hazard bank, and won a great deal of money; he then separated from his partner, who had a bad year and failed. Crockford removed to St. James's Street, where he built the magnificent club-house which bore his name. It was erected at a cost of upwards of ?100,000, and, in its vast proportions and palatial decorations, surpassed anything of the kind ever seen in London. To support such an establishment required a large income; yet Crockford made it, for the highest play was encouraged at his card-tables, but especially at the hazard-tables, where Crockford nightly took his stand, prepared for all comers. And he was successful, and became a millionaire. When he died he left ?700,000, and he had lost as much in mining and other speculations. His death was hastened, it is said, by excessive anxiety over his bets on the turf. He retired from the management of the club in 1840, and died in 1844. The club was soon after closed, and after a few years' interval was reopened as the Naval, Military, and Civil Service Club. It was then converted into dining-rooms, called the Wellington. Later on it was taken by a joint-stock company as an auction-room, and now it is again a club-house, known as the Devonshire Club.

We referred above to Watier's Club. It was established in 1807, at the instigation of the Prince of Wales, and high play was the chief pursuit of its members. 'Princes and nobles,' says Timbs in his 'Curiosities of London,' 'lost or gained fortunes amongst themselves.' But the pace was too fast. The club did not last under its original patronage, and it was then, when it was moribund, taken over by Crockford. At this club, also, macao was the favourite game, as at Brooks's.

One of the most objectionable results of promiscuous gambling is the disreputable company into which it often throws a gentleman.

'That Marquis, who is now familiar grown With every reprobate about the town.... Now, sad transition! all his lordship's nights Are passed with blacklegs and with parasites.. The rage of gaming and the circling glass Eradicate distinction in each class; For he who scarce a dinner can afford Is equal in importance with my lord.'

Members of clubs were fully aware of the nefariousness of their devotion to gambling. When a waiter at Arthur's Club was taken up for robbery, George Selwyn said: 'What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people in Newgate?' Certes, some of the highwaymen in that prison were not such robbers and scoundrels as some of the aristocratic members of those clubs. When, in 1750, the people got frightened about an earthquake in London, predicted to happen in that year, 'Lady Catherine Pelham,' Walpole tells us, 'Lady James Arundell, and Lord and Lady Galway ... go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are going 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, possibly caused by their own mismanagement of public affairs, hypocritically and most impertinently ordered a day of fasting and humiliation, the gambling-houses used to be filled with officials and members of Parliament, who thus had a day off.

There was one famous gambling-house we find we have not yet mentioned, viz., Shaver's Hall, which occupied the whole of the southern side of Coventry Street, from the Haymarket to Hedge Lane , and derived its name from the barber of Lord Pembroke, who built it out of his earnings. Attached to it was a bowling-green, which sloped down to the south. The place was built about the year 1650, and the tennis-court belonging to it till recently might still be seen in St. James's Street.

Certain waves of sentiment or action, or both combined, have at various times passed over the face of European society. A thousand years ago the Old Continent went madly crusading to snatch the Holy Sepulchre from the grasp of the pagan Sultan, who, sick man as he is, still holds it. The movement had certain advantages: it cleared Europe of a good deal of ruffianism, which never came back, as it perished on the journey to Jerusalem, or very properly was killed off by the justly incensed Turks, who could not understand by what right these hordes of robbers invaded their country. Then another phase of society madness arose. Some maniac, clad in armour, on a horse similarly accoutred, would appear, and challenge everyone to admit that the Lady Gwendolyne Mousetrap, whom he kept company with, and took to the tea-gardens on Sundays, was the most peerless damosel, and that whoso doubted it, would not get off by paying a dollar, but would have to fight it out with him. Then another mailed and belted chap would jump up, and maintain that the Countess of Rabbit-Warren--who was the girl he was just then booming--was the finest woman going, and that that slut Gwendolyne Mousetrap was no better than she should be. Of course, as soon as the King and Court heard of the shindy between the two knights a day was appointed when they should fight it out, the combatants being enclosed in a kind of rat-pit, officially called lists, whilst the King, his courtiers and their gentle ladies looked at the sport; and if one of the knights was killed, or perhaps both were killed, or at least maimed for life, the Lady Gwendolyne and the Countess of Rabbit-Warren, who, of course, both assisted at the spectacle, received the congratulations of the Court. Sometimes one of the knights would funk, and not come up to the scratch; then he was declared a lame duck, and the lady whom he had left in the lurch and made a laughing-stock of would erase his name from her tablets, and shy the trumpery proofs of devotion he had given her, a worn-out scarf or Brummagem aigrette, out of an upper window. This was called the age of chivalry. Then a totally different eruption of the fighting mania--which is, after all, the universal principle in human action--took place. A vagrant scholasticus would appear in a University town, and announce that he was ready to hold a disputation with any professor, Doctor of Divinity, or Master of Arts, on any mortal subject, the more subtle, and the more incomprehensible, and the more mystical, the better. Thus, one such scholasticus got into the rostrum at T?bingen, and addressed his audience thus: 'I am about to propound three theses: the answer to the first is known to myself only, and not to you; to the second, the answer is known neither to you nor to me; to the third, the answer is known to you only.' This was a promising programme, and, indeed, proved highly edifying. 'Now, the first question,' resumed the scholasticus, 'is this: Have I got any breeches on? You don't know, but I do; I have not. The second question, the answer to which is known neither to you nor to me, is: Shall I find in this town any draper willing to advance on credit stuff enough to make me a pair? And the third question, the answer to which is known to you only, is: Will any of you pay a tailor's wages to make me a pair? And now that the argument is clearly before you, we may proceed to the consideration of the parabolic triangulation of the binocular theorem;' and then he would bewilder them with a lot of jaw-breaking words, which then, as now, passed for learning. This was called the age of scholasticism. It was succeeded by the Renaissance, which, after a good boil-up of its intellectual ingredients, settled down into a literary mud, an Acqui-la-Bollente, a Nile mud, pleasant to the soul, and fertilizing to the mind, the protoplasm of diarists and letter-writers, of whom--to mention but three--Evelyn, Pepys, and Horace Walpole were prominent patterns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

It is with the latter, Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill, we are chiefly concerned. Horace Walpole, after enlarging a cottage into a Gothic castle, with lath and plaster, and rough-cast walls, and wooden pinnacles, filled it with literary and artistic treasures. But he also gathered around him a select social circle, which included Garrick, Paul Whitehead, General Conway, George Selwyn, Richard Bentley, the poet Gray, Sir Horace Mann, and Lords Edgcumbe and Strafford. And of ladies there was no lack; there were Mrs. Pritchard, Kitty Clive, Lady Suffolk, the Misses Berry, and--would you believe it?--Hannah More! It was the age for chronicling small-beer and home-made wine, gossip, scandal, and frivolity; and Horace Walpole enjoyed existence as a cynical Seladon or platonic Bluebeard amidst this bevy of lively, gay-minded, frolicsome beauties, young and old. Happily, or unhappily, for him, he did not become acquainted with the Misses Berry before 1788, when he was seventy-one years of age. He took the most extraordinary liking to them, and was never content except when they were with him, or corresponding with him. When they went to Italy, he wrote to them regularly once a week, and on their return he installed them at Little Strawberry Hill, a house close to his own, so that he might daily enjoy their society. He appointed them his literary executors, with the charge of collecting and publishing his writings, which was done under the superintendence of Mr. Berry, their father, who was a Yorkshire gentleman. When Walpole had succeeded to the Earldom of Orford he made Mary, the elder of the two sisters, an offer of his hand. Both sisters survived him upwards of sixty years. Little Strawberry Hill, which we just mentioned as the residence of the Misses Berry, had, before their coming to live in it, been occupied by Kitty Clive, the famous actress. Born in 1711, she made her first appearance on the stage of Drury Lane, and in 1732 she married a brother of Lord Clive, but the union proved unhappy, and was soon dissolved. She quitted the stage in 1769, leaving a splendid reputation as an actress and as a woman behind her, and retired to Little Strawberry Hill, where she lived in ease, surrounded by friends and respected by the world. Horace Walpole was a constant visitor at her house, as were many other persons of rank and eminence. It was said of her that no man could be grave when Kitty chose to be merry. But she must have been a woman of some spirit, too, for when it was proposed to stop up a footpath in her neighbourhood she placed herself at the head of the opponents, and defeated the project. She died suddenly in 1785, and Walpole placed an urn in the grounds to her memory, with the inscription:

'Here lived the laughter-loving dame; A matchless actress, Clive her name. The comic Muse with her retired, And shed a tear when she expired.'

The Mrs. Pritchard mentioned above was also an actress, of great and well-deserved fame. She lived at an originally small house, called "Ragman's Castle," which she much improved and enlarged. It had, after her, various occupants, and was finally taken down by Lord Kilmorey during his occupancy of Orleans House, near which it stood.

Among the ladies who were neighbours of Horace Walpole, we must not omit Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who lived for some years in a house on the south side of the road leading to Twickenham Common. She may justly be considered as one of the witty, if not of the pretty, women of Walpole's time. He detested her. Probably he was somewhat jealous of her, for her letters from Constantinople on Turkish life and society earned her the sobriquet of the 'Female Horace Walpole.' He writes of her thus whilst she was living at Florence: 'She is laughed at by the whole town. Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze anyone.... She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side, and partly covered with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so coarse that you would not use it to wash a chimney.' In another letter he describes her dress as consisting of 'a groundwork of dirt, with an embroidery of filthiness.' When he wrote of her then, she was about fifty years of age, and seems to have retained none of the beauty which distinguished her in her earlier years. She was not only coarse in looks, but in her speech and writings, which shock modern fastidiousness. She was not the woman to please Horace Walpole, who, even when in the seventies, liked nothing better than acting as squire or cicerone to fine ladies. Lady Mary was not one of them. She was, in fact, what we now should call a regular Bohemian; and was it to be wondered at? She had been introduced into that sort of life when she was a girl only eight years old by her own father, Evelyn, Earl of Kingston. He was a member of the Kitcat Club, whose chief occupation was the proposing and toasting the beauties of the day. One evening the Earl took it into his head to nominate his daughter. She was sent for in a chaise, and introduced to the company in dirty Shire Lane in a grimy chamber, reeking with foul culinary smells and stale tobacco-smoke, and elected by acclamation. The gentlemen drank the little lady's health upstanding; and feasting her with sweets, and passing her round with kisses, at once inscribed her name with a diamond on a drinking-glass. 'Pleasure,' she says, 'was too poor a word to express my sensations. They amounted to ecstasy. Never again throughout my whole life did I pass so happy an evening.' Of course, the child could not perceive the hideousness of the whole proceeding and its surroundings: if the kisses were seasoned with droppings of snuff from the noses above, which otherwise were not always very clean--even at the beginning of this century Lord Kenyon, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, was an utter stranger to the luxury of a pocket-handkerchief, and had no delicacy about avowing it--it did not detract from the sweetness of the bon-bons with which she was regaled.

Of course, Horace Walpole was acquainted with the Misses Gunning--'those goddesses,' as Mary Montagu styled them. They were nieces of the first Earl of Mayo, and so got a ready introduction into London society, which literally went raving mad about them. Horace Walpole tells us that even the 'great unwashed' followed them in crowds whenever they appeared in public: there must have been an extraordinary appreciation of beauty in the rabble--and what a rabble of ruffians it was!--of those days. But London then was no bigger than a provincial town, compared with what it is now. The two ladies speedily found husbands: the Duke of Hamilton married Elizabeth, the younger, after an evening spent in the society of the sisters and their mother at Bedford House, and was in such a hurry about it that he would wait for neither licence nor ring, and, after with some difficulty satisfying the scruples of the parson called upon to celebrate the extempore ceremony, they were married with the ring of a bed-curtain, at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel. Three weeks afterwards Lord Coventry married her sister, Maria. The Duke of Hamilton dying in 1758, six years after the strange nuptials in Mayfair Chapel, the widow in the following year married Jack Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyll. Lady Coventry did not wear her coronet long; in 1760 she died, it is said, in consequence of her excessive use of white paint. Her sister, 'twice duchessed,' survived her many years.

We have far from exhausted the list of the ladies distinguished for wit and beauty who figure in Horace Walpole's 'Letters,' but our space is exhausted. We cannot, however, conclude without a few words on the 'Letters' in question. Their chief value consists in the lively descriptions of public events; not as dry and cold history records them, but by letting us have peeps behind the scenes, so as to see the wire-pullers, the secret machinery, which set in motion the actors on the political and social stage. They show us lords and ladies in their neglig?s, and how the conceit of a hairdresser, or the caprice of a lady's-maid, may make or mar the destinies of a nation. This copious letter-writing forms indeed an era in our literary history which will never return or be renewed; the prying reporter and the irrepressible interviewer now supply all the world with what the letter-writer communicated to a few friends only. This present age may be called the Age of Reminiscences: everybody is writing his; of making books there is no end!

With regard to the persons employed in a coffee-house, we learn from one advertisement: 'To prevent all mistakes among gentlemen of the other end of the town, who come but once a week to St. James's Coffee-house, either by miscalling the servants, or requiring such things from them as are not properly within their respective provinces, this is to give notice that Kidney, keeper of the book-debts of the outlying customers, and observer of those who go off without paying, having resigned that employment, is succeeded by John Sowton, to whose place of caterer of messages and first coffee-grinder William Bird is promoted, and Samuel Bardock comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird.'

Well, the coffee-houses are things of the past; a few survive as taverns. What may be considered as their successors are called coffee-shops, patronized by working-men chiefly, but the 'humours' are of the tamest description; they may supply statistics to temperance apostles, but no literary entertainment to the public.

However, the Reform Bill was passed in 1832, and pocket boroughs were abolished. There had been thirty-seven places returning members with constituencies not exceeding fifty electors, and fourteen of those places had not more than twenty electors. There were three boroughs each containing only one ?10 householder. One of the boroughs only paid in assessed taxes ?3 9s., another ?16 8s. 9d., a third ?40 17s. 1d. But, luckily for the public, the Reform Bill did not abolish the fun of the flags, music, beer, and jokes of elections. The delicate attentions which could still be paid to candidates remained in full swing. Thus, we remember an election in the Isle of Wight: The father of one of the candidates for Parliamentary distinction, in the Conservative interest, had, in his youthful days, married a lady who, in a peripatetic manner, dealt in oysters. His rival, a Radical, paid him the compliment of sending him daily barrows and truck-loads of oyster-shells, which were, with his kind regards, discharged in front of the hotel where his committee was established, and from whose windows he addressed the electors. It was splendid fun, and calculated to impress the intelligent foreigner. It showed how highly the British public appreciated their elective franchise. Pleasantries had, indeed, always been the rule at election-time. When Fox, in 1802, canvassed Westminster, he asked a shopkeeper on the opposite side for his vote and interest, when the latter produced a halter, and said that was all he could give him. Fox thanked him, but said he could not think of depriving him of it, as no doubt it was a family relic. At an election at Norwich in 1875 the committee-room of the Conservative candidate was attacked, but the agent kept up the fire and had red-hot pokers ready, which, standing at the top of the stairs, he offered to his assailants, but they would not take them! In the same town the Liberals held a prayer-meeting, at which the Conservatives presented each man with one of Moody and Sankey's hymn-books, with something between the leaves. In fact, the Reform Bill had not made elections pure. William Roupell obtained his seat for Lambeth by the expenditure of ?10,000, 'and,' said a man well able to judge of the truth of his assertion, 'if he were released from prison and would spend another ?10,000, he would be re-elected, in spite of his having proved a criminal.'

Money carried the day at elections. According to a speech made by Mr. Bright at Glasgow in 1866, a member had told him that his election had cost him ?9,000 already, and that he had ?3,000 more to pay. At a contest in North Shropshire in 1876, the expenses of the successful candidate, Mr. Stanley Leighton, amounted to ?11,727, and of the defeated candidate, Mr. Mainwaring, to ?10,688. At the General Election of 1880, in the county of Middlesex, the expenses of the successful candidates, Lord George Hamilton and Mr. Octavius Coope, were ?11,506. The cost of the Gravesend election, and the petition which followed and unseated the candidate returned, was estimated at ?20,000. But the most expensive contest ever known in electioneering was that for the representation of Yorkshire. The candidates were Viscount Milton, son of Earl Fitzwilliam, a Whig; the Hon. Henry Lascelles, son of Lord Harewood, a Tory; and William Wilberforce, in the Dissenting and Independent interest. The election was carried on for fifteen days, Mr. Wilberforce being at the head of the poll all the time. It terminated in his favour and in that of Lord Milton. The contest is said to have cost the parties near half a million pounds. The expenses of Wilberforce were defrayed by public subscription, more than double the sum being raised within a few days, and one moiety was afterwards returned to the subscribers. When Whitbread, the brewer, first opposed the Duke of Bedford's interest at Bedford, the Duke informed him that he would spend ?50,000 rather than that he should come in. Whitbread replied that was nothing, the sale of his grains would pay for that. Now, John Elwes, the miser, knew better than that. Though worth half a million of money, he entered Parliament, by the interest of Lord Craven, at the expense of 1s. 6d., for which he had a dinner at Abingdon. From 1774 he sat for the next twelve years for Berkshire, his conduct being perfectly independent, and in his case there had been no bribery that could be brought home to him. He was a great gambler, and, after staking large sums all night, he would, in the morning, go to Smithfield to await the arrival of his cattle from his farms in Essex, and, if not arrived, would walk on to meet them. He wore a wig; if he found one thrown away into the gutter, he would appropriate and wear it. In those days members occasionally wore dress-swords at the House. One day a gentleman seated next to Elwes was rising to leave his place, and just at that moment Elwes bent forward, so that the point of the sword the gentleman wore came in contact with Elwes's wig, which it whisked off and carried away. The House was instantly in a roar of laughter, whilst the gentleman, unconscious of what he had done, calmly walked away, and Elwes after him to recover his wig, which looked as if it was one of those he had picked up in the gutter.

Bribes were expected and given, as we have seen. Of course, the thing was not done openly. Tricks were practised, understood by all parties. The agent would sit in a room in an out-of-the-way place. A voter would come in; the agent would say, 'How are you to-day?' and hold up three fingers. 'I am not very well,' the answer would be, when the agent would accidentally hold up his hand, upon which the voter would say that he thought fresh air would do him good, and look out of the window as if examining the sky. In the meantime the agent would place five sovereigns on the table, and also go to look at the weather. His back being turned to the table, the voter would quietly slip the cash into his pocket, and, saying 'Good-morning,' take his departure. And how could any bribery be proved? But occasionally the people expecting bribes were nicely taken in. Lord Cochrane, when he first stood for Honiton, refused to give bribes, and the seat was secured by his opponent, who gave ?5 for every vote. On this Cochrane sent the bellman round to announce that he would give to every one of the minority who had voted for him 10 guineas. At the next election no questions were asked, and Cochrane was returned by an overwhelming majority. Those who had voted for him then intimated that they expected some acknowledgment for their support. He declined to give a penny, and when he was reminded that, after the former election, he had given 10 guineas to every one of the minority, he coolly replied that this was for their disinterestedness in refusing his opponent's ?5, and that to pay them now would be acting in violation of his principle not to bribe. And the disinterested voters marched off with faces as long as those of horses.

The Reform Bill of 1832, which was highly objectionable to old-fashioned Conservatives, was accused by them of having introduced some very queer and curious members into the House. Through this Bill the bone-grubber, as Raike calls him, W. Cobbett, was returned for Oldham, and Brighton, under the very nose of the Court, returned two rampant Radicals, who openly talked of reducing the allowance made to the King and Queen. Nay, John Gully, a prize-fighter, was returned to the House for Pontefract, and was re-elected at the next election. He at one time kept the Plough Inn in Carey Street, which was pulled down just before the erection of the new Law Courts. Eventually he resigned his seat on account of ill-health, as he averred; but as he became a great patron of racing, and was a constant attendant at the various race-courses, his ill-health was probably only a pretence for quitting a sphere for which he felt himself unfit. On his first election the following epigram appeared against him:

'If anyone ask why should Pontefract sully Its name by returning to Parliament Gully, The etymological cause, I suppose, is He's broken the bridges of so many noses.'

'Now, the Lambeth folks this wealthy gent As their member did decide on, But little they knew he'd happened to do Some things he didn't oughter; For he'd forged a will and several deeds....

'And the public said: "Well, this here Roupell Has got no more than he oughter." So there was an end of the wealthy gent As was member from over the water.'

Lambeth appears to have been unfortunate in the selection of its Parliamentary candidates. In 1852 the parochial party, wishing for a local man, formed themselves into a committee to secure the election of Mr. Joseph Harvey, of Lambeth House, a drapery establishment in the Westminster Bridge Road. Mr. Harvey had never taken an active part in public matters; his tastes lay not that way. He shrank from public life, and had no training or aptitude for addressing large meetings. However, he was forced forward; but when he spoke at the Horns--the speech was written for him by someone else--his total incapacity for the position thrust on him became so apparent that he gave up the contest, but not before he had afforded plenty of food to the squib-writers.

Parliament is not above the use of nicknames, either by way of praise or in scorn. Cobbett's talent for fastening such names on anyone he disliked was very great. He invented 'Prosperity Robinson,' 'AEolus Canning,' 'Pink-nosed Liverpool,' 'unbaptized, buttonless blackguards,' or Quakers. Lord Yarmouth, from the colour of his whiskers, and from the place which gave him his title, was known as 'Red Herrings.' Lord Durham so often opposed his colleagues in the Cabinet that he was called the 'Dissenting Minister.' Thomas Duncombe was so popular that he was always spoken of as 'Honest' or 'Poor' Tom; his French friends called him 'Cher Tomie.' John Arthur Roebuck had a habit of bringing forward, in a startling way, facts he had got hold of, and thus raising opposition; and from a passage in a speech he made at the Cutlers' Feast, at Sheffield, in 1858, obtained the nickname of 'Tear 'em.' He had just paid a visit to Cherbourg, and returned home with feelings very unfriendly to the then ruler of France, to which he gave expression at the feast, excusing himself at the same time for using such language towards a neighbour by saying: 'The farmer who goes to sleep, having placed the watch-dog, Tear 'em, over his rick-yard, hears that dog bark. He bawls out of the window: "Down, Tear 'em, down!" And Tear 'em does not again disturb his sleep, till he is woke up by the strong blaze of his corn and hay ricks. I am Tear 'em. Beware! Cherbourg is a standing menace to England.' Michael Angelo Taylor was known by the sobriquet of 'Chicken' Taylor. On some points of law he had answered the great lawyer Bearcroft, but not without apologizing for his venturing, he being but a chicken in the law, on a fight with the cock of Westminster Hall. Charles Wynn was brother to Sir Watkin Wynn, and from a peculiarity in the utterances of the latter, and the shrillness of Charles's voice, the two went by the nicknames of 'Bubble and Squeak.' Sir Watkin was also known as 'Small Journal' Wynn, from his extensive knowledge of Parliamentary rule. William Cowper, falsely accused of having married a second wife whilst his first was still alive, was known as 'Will Bigamy.'

Strangers formerly were not allowed to be present at the deliberations of the House; now they are admitted to the Strangers' Gallery, but never to the floor of the House. Yet sometimes there will be an intruder. Once Lord North, when speaking, was interrupted by the barking of a dog which had crept in. He turned round, and said: 'Mr. Speaker, I am interrupted by a new member.' The dog was driven out, but got in again, and recommenced barking, when Lord North, in his dry way, said: 'Spoke once.'

There is a boom just now in the theatrical world. New theatres are springing up, not only in London proper, but in all its suburbs, yet it is only history repeating itself. From 1570 to 1629 no less than seventeen playhouses had been built in London, and London then extended only from the Tower to Westminster, and from Oxford Street to Blackman Street in the Borough. The first London theatre was the Fortune, opened about the year 1600, a large round, brick building between Whitecross Street and Golding--now Golden--Lane, which was burnt down on December 9, 1621. The town was then full of actors, for besides those playing at the various theatres, there were royal comedians. Many noblemen kept companies of players, nay, the lawyers acted in the Inns of Court, and there were actors of note among them. But the inevitable reaction ensued. Amidst the storms of the Revolution the stage was neglected. Even Shakespeare had to take a back-seat till Garrick brought him into fashion again, though it is chiefly to the learned and enthusiastic criticism and appreciation of German students of Shakespeare that the revival of his plays on the stage is due. His reputation was 'made in Germany,' and the Germans we have to thank for a Shakespeare who is presentable to a modern audience, which the original writer was not; his plays were only fit to be acted before the savages who delighted in bull and bear baiting. This estimate of the Shakespearian drama is not in accordance with the prevailing sentiment, but we have a right to our opinions and the courage to express them. However, this is only incidental to our theme, which deals more with actors and acting than with the plays they took parts in.

The Curtain is said to have been erected in 1570, on the site of the present Curtain Road, but the date is doubtful, and it was more of an inn than a playhouse.

There is a general opinion abroad that the realistic play is of quite modern date, probably brought on the stage in 'L'Assommoir.' In a publication of July, 1797, I find it stated that 'our managers some time ago conceived it would be proper to introduce realities instead of fictions. Hence we have seen real horses and real bulls on the stage, gracing the triumphal entry of some hero. Hence, too, real water has been supplied in such quantities that Harlequin's leap into the sea would now really be no joke.... The introduction of water will, no doubt, facilitate the introduction of real sea-fights, provided we can get real admirals and seamen.' But the writer seems to have been oblivious of the fact that, in the middle of the last century, already the water of the New River had been carried under the flooring of Sadler's Wells Theatre, the boards being removed, for the exhibition of aquatic performances. And as to this century, long before the more recent realistic plays, we have seen in the sixties a real cab with a real horse brought on to the stage to give the heroine, who is about to elope, the opportunity of uttering the pun: 'Now, four-wheeler, wo!' . And a very good pun it is.

'SIR EDWARD: I saw the "Children of Paul's" last night, and troth, they pleased me prettie, prettie well. The apes in time will do it handsomely.

'PLANET: I like the audience that frequenteth there with much applause. A man shall not be choked with the stench of garlick, nor be passed to the barmy jacket of a beer brewer.'

The stage did not attain a dignified position till the time of Shakespeare. He and his fellow-actors--Burbage, Heminge, Condell, Taylor, Kemp, Sly--ennobled it, and since then the roll of English actors who have gained distinction on the boards is very long, and our limited space allows us to refer to but a few of them, and then only to some characteristic traits.

In Clare Street, Clare Market, there is a public-house called the Sun. John Rich, the harlequin and lessee of the Duke's Theatre in Portugal Street , returning from the theatre in a hackney-coach, ordered to be driven to the Sun. On arriving there, he jumped out of the coach, and through the window into the public-house. The coachman thought his fare was a 'bilk'; but whilst he was still looking up and down the street, Rich again jumped into the coach, and told the driver to take him to another public-house. On reaching it, Rich offered to pay the coachman, but the latter refused the money, saying: 'No, none of your money, Mr. Devil; though you wear shoes, I can see your hoofs'; and he drove off as quickly as possible. The theatre called the Duke's Theatre, in Portugal Street, was rebuilt by Christopher Rich, the father of the above-mentioned John, but he died before the building was quite finished, and it was opened by John; and it is in this theatre that the modern stage took its rise, and here the earliest Shakespearian revivals took place. Quin was one of the performers there; and there the 'Beggar's Opera' was first produced, and acted on sixty-two nights in one season, causing the saying that it made Gay rich and Rich gay. The opera was written under the auspices of the Duchess of Queensberry, who agreed to indemnify Rich in all expenses if the daring speculation should fail.

'What, Killigrew! Where are you going? Did I not give orders that I was not to be disturbed?'

'I don't mind your orders, and I am going as fast as I can.'

'Why, where are you going?'

'To hell,' replied the jester in a sepulchral tone.

'What are you going to do there?' asked the King, laughing.

'To fetch back Oliver Cromwell, to take some care of the national affairs, for I am sure your Majesty takes none.'

And the King went to the Council.

'To musicians, for three nights, ?0 5s. 6d.; for players in bread and ale, ?0 3s. 1d.; for decorations, dresses, and play-books, ?1 0s. 0d.; to John Hobbard, priest, and author of the piece, ?0 2s. 8d.; for the place in which the presentation was held, ?0 1s. 0d.; for furniture, ?0 1s. 4d.; for fish and bread, ?0 0s. 4d.; for painting three phantoms and devils, ?0 0s. 6d.; and for four chickens for the hero, ?0 0s. 4d.' We see here the author received only 2s. 8d. for writing the play. Matters have improved since then; Sheridan realized ?3,000 by the sale of his altered play of 'Pizarro.' In the early part of this century authors of successful pieces received from the theatre from ?250 to ?500, and from the purchaser of the copyright for publication from ?100 to ?400. Then actors received ?80 a week; favourite performers--stars, as we should now call them--were paid ?50 a night. Actors have at times found very generous friends. When, in 1808, Covent Garden Theatre, then under the management of John P. Kemble, was burnt down, the loss was immense, and the insurances did not exceed ?50,000. The then Duke of Northumberland offered Kemble the sum of ?10,000 as a loan on his simple bond. The offer was accepted, and the bond given. On the day appointed for laying the first stone, the bond was returned cancelled!

Italian opera-singers have made large fortunes in England. When Owen McSwiney was lessee of the Haymarket, circa 1708, he engaged one Nicolini, a Neapolitan, who really was a splendid actor and a magnificent-looking man, with a voice which won universal admiration, at a salary of eight hundred guineas for the season--at that time an enormous sum. Nicolini left the stage in 1712, and returned to Italy, where he built himself a fine villa, which, as a testimony of his gratitude to the nation which enriched him, he called the English Folly. In 1721 a company of French comedians occupied the Haymarket, to the disgust of native actors. Aaron Hill, the dramatic author and opera-manager, consequently had occasion to write to John Rich: 'I suppose you know that the Duke of Montague and I have agreed that I am to have that house half the week, and the "French vermin" the other half.' International courtesies were at some discount at the time!

A few theatrical anecdotes may close these lucubrations. Actors sometimes are strangely affected by their own parts. Betterton, although his countenance was ruddy, when he performed Hamlet, through the violent and sudden emotion of horror at the presence of his father's spectre, instantly turned as white as his collar, whilst his whole body was affected by a strong tremor. When Booth the first time attempted the ghost, when Betterton acted Hamlet, that actor's look at him struck him with such horror that he became disconcerted to such a degree that he could not speak his part. Of Mrs. Siddons, it was said that by the force of fancy and reflection, she used to be so wrought up in preparing to play Lady Constance in 'King John,' that, when she set out from her own house to the theatre, she was already Constance herself.

Smith--better known as 'Gentleman Smith'--married a sister of Lord Sandwich. For some time the union was kept concealed, but an apt quotation of Charles Bannister elicited the truth:

'"Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague!"' said Bannister, when Foote bantered Smith on the subject. The latter was not proof against the sally, and acknowledged the marriage. 'Well,' said Bannister, 'I rejoice that you have got a Sandwich from the family; but if ever you get a dinner from them, I'll be hanged.' The prophecy proved true.

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