Eness with vica Marina entered into it. He gave me the whole Estart of the pie from first to last; spoke of the gentlemanly bearng a LS LICHOVEsc. and seemed to me to take an absolute pleasure ing the vide But when be touched upon the sufferings of the fire mu nnocent pabuster, his lip quivered, his frame VEL 1 2 emmed ts eve, be wilked hastily to and fro, and, viet de renumet 2 is sen. joke of the subject no more. I longed ugea mure Sm him; to pitter up his real opinions of men and, y me in feta from the mask which the periodical VRT must tenis wear; to enjoy the true sentiment which lay beTell the scre, ise sweet crashed water-plants beneath the ice. Jar the mas a Lumice party are a too short, and tea came, and sevet i čvek Zune, and I rusted into the street, thence to mingle ANET MAN? WI Wad regulate me if they thought I had any of TE SHEL of ericire about me.

Isham w mure. I was not surprised when I learned that Sow Esse tai vacet iis imbs and brought him to the brink of The re but tai et hs mtellect bright and clear to the last. That ESI VIETCu mind wich cen stand the wear and tear to which pour Ji 12mm sieradz Es ist thoughts, as they are recorded, were in tamicine and of Homer. May we not hope that the pure Was dus spared. vis ¿ċines, perhaps in the silence of the series 120 Engorged in bely and hopeful refections that the thing at the if had a fel and partial influence over his spirit—

Dhe shemt erection of eternity had the noblest and the

tree care of that mad, se vigorous in its close?

Then I merev n my own study, the diferent literary circles not I have seen. I admire at the contrast between my setting out Bu De Pau Amy journey as a pedestrian through the walks of life. Inare at the virus pauses which the polite world has assumed. is t has shume 1700 ne; the virus aspects which certain cliques of men, a. Salewing the same pursuits have worn. How like a dream † new sens & suppose Kigma the soul and centre of a certain gree, vi hung on his case, and adulated his talents! And ** N* de benery of is brief, feverish existence has passed AWAY Reted only by the accents of compassion, or adduced to * peint i mori.” To adorn a tale" he never was intended. How ompieter was his time limited to a certain circle! how un-English was his Perucicue bow bee-European his celebrity! The circle that surrounded in scaly melting away; it is broken up ; one by one the leaves of the book have been snatched out by death: the ears that istened to him are even already dulled; the eyes which gured an ìam are closed in death. The very bookseller who suffered je dis aggression upon the literary merits of Mr. Grantley Berkeley bus suna, aber siew disease, to an untimely grave. Men of letters, ʼn the present day, live fist: the words of the Psalmist, applicable to 1. V tem re peclarly appropriate. As soon as they arrive at their verità, so son does the canker-worm of disease undermine the

rove, azi person the sip that nourishes the tree: they pass away, to borrow from the sublimest of all human writers, even as a sleep; they fade away suddenly like grass.”

When last I saw Maginn, there gazed upon his soft but restless eye, there hang upon his words, a pale young man, himself a genius of the purest ray, adulating the genius of another. I knew him

not; his manner was unobtrusive; the circle who stood around Maginn had scarcely heard his name. He stood behind in a retired part of the room. Unseen, he went away-no one missed him. No one alluded to the young Irishman: the name of Gerald Griffin was not so much as uttered in that noisy chamber. As he passed me, the grave and melancholy aspect, the lean form, and anxious countenance arrested my attention; but still I was not sufficiently interested to inquire his name.

Not long afterwards I undertook, upon the recommendation of a short encomium in The Edinburgh Review, to read "The Collegians." It is among the most powerful of the neglected novels of the day. I speak not of its merits merely as a portaiture true to the life, and far exceeding "Banim" or Harry Lorrequer," of Irish manners; I speak not of it merely as a tale of sad and powerful interest, but as a solemn, appalling, moral lesson. Nor is it the common lesson of passion making its own retribution, or of vice, rendered so delightful as to seem to wear the cast-off vestments of virtue, triumphing over innocence. Its ground-work is domestic: the seldom told tale of a mother and son: the pride and fondness of the one, the lessons of dubious morality, the education of self-indulgence turning upon her. The son of fine and generous nature, becoming her curse-her tyrant-her shame. The abuse of the maternal influence is slowly but admirably unfolded: the mother, who idolizes her son, points to his weak and wavering resolution, unconsciously, the path to crime. There exists not in fiction, I dare to assert it, a finer portraiture than that of Mrs. Cregaw, the mother of the fine-spirited, warm-hearted murderer; it is an original creation of the highest power.

"How is it," I asked L. E. L. one morning, "that so fine a work has produced so little sensation? Who is the author ?—what?and where?"

"Alas!" she answered, shaking her head, "he is a poor and almost friendless young man. I know him slightly," and she drew a rapid picture of the young man whom I had recently seen in company with Maginn, and, for the first time, she made me acquainted with the name of Gerald Griffin.

He is gone: his intellectual strength was to him, indeed, but "labour and sorrow ;" his life had "consumed away as a moth fretting a garment," until at last the Sirocco came: fever attacked him, and he sank to rest in the convent to which he had retreated like a "stricken deer" to lie down and die. He was a very gifted, a good man, and, as a writer of fiction, a great man. But he had no wor

shippers. He lived in the solitude of the heart, in the vast, unthinking world which moves on like a tide, and recks not the minute objects which it passes over in its ebb and flow. His heart was saddened, if not broken by the neglect of critics-the hardness of booksellers-the difficulty of living by talents which fetched not their price. But despair never made him prostitute his powers to mere popularity; nor did it find him rebellious beneath the chastisements of Heaven. His was not the rash impatience of Chatterton; rather let me compare him to the humble, the lonely, the suffering Kirk White,—a reed, indeed, shaken and bowed down by the angry blast of adversity,—a delicate plant amid a wilderness of rank weeds.

Amid the heads which were bowed down to listen to the fancies of Maginn, was a face then fresh, and youthful, and beaming. A dark,

GAMING, GAMING-HOUSES, AND GAMESTERS:

AN ANECDOTAL ACCOUNT OF PLAY, HOUSES OF PLAY,
AND PLAY-MEN.

Taylor's establishment in Pall Mall. stood next in degree to Fielder's in the style and character of its arrangements, but lacked some of the profuse liberality of entertainment which distinguished the house in Bennet-street. The proprietor was a man of gentlemanly manners and appearance, who had formerly been engaged in banking and commercial transactions in the City-the same game of rouge et noir was played at this as at other houses; and in addition, there was a very capacious apartment on the ground floor, at the extreme end of a very long passage, where the royal and distinguished game of English hazard was carried on with great spirit each night, after the operations of rouge et noir had ceased. At this hazard table a large party generally met, and immense sums of money were played for, the game continuing from midnight until six or seven o'clock in the succeeding day-the profit to the proprietor or keeper of the house, on this game, arose from a payment of half-a-guinea from every player, who threw three mains in succession, which, on an estimate of six or eight hours' good play, would yield a nightly sum of from £25 to £30.

The rouge et noir department at Taylor's was somewhat remarkable from the walls of the room being adorned with a handsome paper of French manufacture and design, illustrative of the story of the descent of Æneas with the sybil into the infernal regions, as related by Virgil and what was most singularly appropriate in the arrangement of the panels descriptive of the subject was, that at the immediate opening or doorway to the play-room, was the very apposite representation of Cerberus guarding the entrance to hell, and the sybil in the act of throwing the sop, which was to be effective in lulling the monster to a comfortable nap, so that the "facilis descensus Averni" might be safely accomplished. Whether this arrangement was attributable to the classic taste of the gaming-house proprietor, or to the wit and waggery of some intelligent paper-hanger, is not known; but it was a frequent subject of jocose observation amongst the visitors.

There was an air of quiet and privacy in the general conduct and management of this establishment, which gave it great preference with a certain class of persons who were desirous to avoid notoriety, and preserve the incognito when engaged at play. There were a select few who confined their speculations entirely to Taylor's, on this account; of this number, recollection serves to the recognition of faces familiar under the freshness of youth, but now mellowed alike in appearance by time, and occasionally disguised under the head-gear of professional adornment, as exemplified in the person of a learned judge, recently and most deservingly elevated to the Bench-and in those also of Messrs. J-—, K——, R——, A ——, and others, whose pleasing and intelligent countenances are now to be recognized in the foremost rank at the Bar, under the weighty badge of full-bottomed wigs, and

VOL. XVIII.

UU

the well-merited accompaniment of silk gowns.

Similar examples of early propensity are recognizable also in members of the senate, and in individuals holding high rank and position in the military, naval, and and service of the country.

It would accord with the intentions of the author of this paper We make Evidoes mention of any person who may at some period or other of life have imprudently indulged in the propensity for play: ban while referring with pleasure to the example of individuals who have had wisdom and resolution to withdraw from the danger, and to devzde their energies to study and pursuits that have led to well-merited humours and fortune, it may be allowed to make anonymous but faithful alusoon to cases of less happy result. The annals of gaming afford, pertars, no more distressing or sad examples of ruinous, degrading, and ESCressing Consequences, than is to be found in the present fate and condaca of a gentleman (Major B——) who has occasionally been seen EVE DEL, rot in the mere threadbare garment of poverty, bespeaking a change from more prosperous condition, but in the absolute rags of EXTREME ZETTICIDE and abject misery, and apparently suffering from want at 15è's commonest necessaries. This gentleman (for such he still is, in de intrinsic sense of the term, even under the tatters that barely cover him,' was formerly a captain, with brevet rank of major in the L& Gmris, and was present at the Battle of Waterloo. His father, it is betered, realized a large fortune in mercantile pursuits; and having bestowed on his son the education of a gentleman, purchased for him a commission in the household brigade, in which he rose to the rank deserbed Returning to England after the peace, he became a frequenter of the rouge et noir tables, but his visits were chiefly made to Tayar's establishment in Pall Mail. In the course of two or three years be lost the whole of his fortune; the proceeds of the sale of his commission followed, and lastly disappeared his valuable furniture, pictes piste, jewellery,—everything, in fact, that he possessed. Thus reduced, he became a pensioner on the bounty, or rather the policy, of the man whom his ruin had enriched; but the trifle being withdrawn, he fell into the lowest state of poverty and want-honourable pride had made its last struggle, and giving way to the cravings of hunger, and all the accumulated evis of dire distress and aggravated suffering, he stood one amidst the group of paupers in the parish workhouse, a supplicant for the wretched pittance of parochial relief; his condition is reported to have been since somewhat bettered by an engagement as porter in a City house of business. The condition of this gentleman is typical of that of hundreds reduced to similar extremes from the same distressing

Another instance of sad reverse and the ruinous consequence of exces sive play, but attended with less extreme of suffering, is recognizable in the altered circumstances and reduced state of Mr. G-, a gentleman of family, and once possessed of ample fortune-an individual uniting in himself every gentlemanly quality, and distinguished for amability, kindness, and generosity of heart. In him, however, lurked the one plaguespot, or propensity for play; he was a devotee to rouge et noir, and for days and nights in succession would give himself up to its fatal infatuation. He has himself declared (and the fact is known) that he has frequently posted with four horses from his country residence, about twenty miles distant from town, to be present at the commencement