Either in consequence of these proceedings, | desperate enough, yet it was practised in a or for some undisclosed reason, ladies of rank desultory manner, being followed for no special henceforth ceased to lay themselves open to end, and according to no fixed principles. It censure for their passionate addiction to play. has now become a science. T"make" a book Instead of inviting a small number of guests on the Derby is an accomplishment requiring to pass the evening in card-playing, ladies tenfold the labor to acquire that had to be of fashion began to invite a large number of expended in learning all the games of chance guests to pass the night in dancing, or doing which were formerly in vogue. In fact gamnothing. bling on the turf has partially superseded gaming with cards and dice. Faro-tables have long ago disappeared from fashionable drawing-rooms. Crockford's is a thing of the past. Yet the votary of gaming need not lament: if he but subscribe to Tattersall's, he will there find opportunities for gambling such as were never enjoyed by the frequenters of Crockford's. The abandonment of play on the part of the ladies was followed by a similar move on the part of the gentlemen. The latter agreed to respect the laws which many of them had helped to frame. Clubs such as White's, Brookes's, and Boodle's, which were originally instituted to evade the law against public gaming-houses, were transformed into clubs for social enjoyment and political purposes. The games of whist, chess, and bil- horse-racing, another cause has largely conliards came to be recognized as the only games tributed to lessen the habit of gaming by at which gentlemen should play; all others, superseding the necessity for indulging it. and especially all games of chance, being This cause is the vast devlopment of joint voted vulgar and improper. stock undertakings, and which has been fol In addition to the increased fondness for If gaiming first declined because frowned lowed by increased facilities for speculating on by fashion, its decline was accelerated by in shares. Men who were formerly attracted a taste arising for other kinds of excitement. to the gaming-table in the hope of growing Horse-racing had always been a national past-rich more rapidly than by steadily following ,time; but betting upon horses did not become their business or profession, now crowd to a national passion till about the earlier por- the Stock Exchange, and speculate there in tion of the nineteenth century. It is true shares and stocks. The business of a stockthat, long before then, men of fashion found broker would be very restricted if he made in betting a pleasure which nothing else purchases for investors only. One-half, if could yield. They were accustomed to in- not three-fourths, of the business transacted dulge their tastes for it on all possible occa- on the Stock Exchange is purely speculative; sions. Thus it once happened that a man in other words, is simple gambling. An Act having fallen down in a fit before the window was passed in the reign of George II., “To of a club, heavy bets were made whether or prevent the infamous practice of stock-jobnot he was dead; and those who had backed bing; " but its provisions were systematically the latter opinion with a bet, strongly ob- disregarded, and very recently it has been jected to his being bled, lest he might recover, repealed. Thus time bargains may now be and they should lose their money. Horace entered into with impunity, which means Walpole records a bet of so remarkable a that a speculator may buy what he cannot character, that we have great difficulty in pay for, with the view of selling what he has crediting his statement. When informing purchased before the arrival of the day apSir H. Mann, in 1774, of the manners of the pointed for payment. If the price obtained young men of that time, he says: "One of by the sale exceed that originally paid, he them has committed a murder, and intends pockets the difference; but if the price obto repeat it. IIe betted fifteen hundred tained be less than what was £rst paid, he pounds that a man could live twelve hours hands the difference to his broker. Thus the under water; hired a desperate fellow, sunk suppression of all games of chance has merely him in a ship, by way of experiment, and resulted in giving an augmented impetas to both ship and man have not appeared since, the Game of Speculation. Another ship and man are to be tried for their lives, instead of Mr. Blake, the assassin." Although the betting of the last century was Shall we conclade, then, that in the matter of gaming we are more enlightened and less open to censure than our forefathers? This much is true, the gambler is a less foolish | mund Burke truly observed in his great man, and a less useless member of society speech on Economical reform: " Gaming is than the gamester. While the objects of the inherent in human nature. It belongs to us gambler on the turf and the Stock Exchange, all." The first achievement of a savage is to and of the gamester at cards and dice, are produce something that will intoxicate him : identical, experience has proved that the he next proceeds to devise a matter whereby former may succeed, and that the latter must he may stake his property, and even his libfail in attaining their objects; that the gam- erty at play. A civilized man improves on bler may acquire wealth, but that the game- the crude expedients and devices of the savster must be ruined if he persevere in gam- age, substituting for the heavy fermented sap ing. By speculating in shares, capital is of a tree, the sparkling champagne, and for circulated and commerce increased; thus, clumsy games with straws or pebbles, the whether the speculator be enriched or impov- roulette-table with its ingenious machinery erished, his fellow-men are vastly benefited in consequence of his transactions. Of the gamester we may say what La Bruyère said of him who was once engaged in intrigue: he must continue as he has begun, because nothing else gives him any gratification. A confirmed gamester exists only to deal cards or throw dice. The chances are that he will forfeit his honor as well as indulge his taste; for, as Lord Chesterfield warned his son: "A member of a gaming-club should be a cheat, or he will soon be a beggar." and elaborate rules. Wealth, excitement, and the power of bringing the future near, are prized alike by men of every degree of culture. Though they never obtain by gaming the wealth they covet, yet they find in gaming the excitement they value next to wealth, and around a gaming-table have disclosed to them a new future every minute or every hour. Influenced by such feelings, at one time they waste their substance, and at another imperil their lives. They will cheerfully traverse unknown seas in quest of an In our times, the passion for play is grati- imaginary El Dorado, yet refrain from labofied with less injury to society than during riously tilling the soil beneath their feet, and any other period of our history. Unques-converting its produce into gold. Their tionably it is an incalculable gain that ladies thoughts are as erroneous as their actions are and gentlemen of fashion should now prefer ridiculous. They fancy that the jewels which dancing to gaming, and should even profess flash from a royal diadem, the gold heaped to take pleasure in attending gatherings made up the royal coffers, constitute the glories of ostensibly for the purpose of conversation, a monarch and the riches of a nation. In but at which the conversation is restricted to acting as they do, they sin against the irrecomplaints about the heat, and protests sistible condition of man's existence, that in against the pressure. The pleasures of soci- the sweat of his brow can he alone earn his ety are always hollow and frivolous: we re-bread with honor and dignity. Alike in their joice that in these days they are not vicious as well as unsatisfying. What the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis justly remarked, with obvious reference to the amusements in which modern society delights, would have been even more telling and applicable had it been uttered a century ago: "Life would be very tolerable but for its pleasures.' thoughts and actions do they ignore the immutable truth that the wealth of the world is the well-directed labor of the world's inhabitants. In no other way could the folly of the gamester, and the mischief of gaming, be better summed up than in these words of Dr. Johnson: "I call a gamester an unsocial man; an unprofitable man. Gaming is a To extirpate from the human breast a taste mode of transferring property without profor gaming is simply impossible. As Ed-ducing any intermediate good." WITS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. From The National Review. depicted it in the light of the sublimest of human tragedies. Whatever else a sympathizing or a hostile critic judged it, both re Euvres de Chamfort, précédées d'une étude sur sa vie et son esprit. Par Arsène Hous-garded it as colossal; and colossal in a sense Histoire de la Presse en France. Par Eugène Esprit de Rivarol. Paris, 1808. that forbade, as if half profane, the notice of those collateral topics which, in meaner matters, might appropriately claim attention. The scale of action was heroic, the performers demi-gods or demi-fiends, and praise and Causeries du Lundi. Par M. C. A. Sainte- censure alike assumed a tone of fitting gravBeuve. Vols. III., IV. ity and respect. The half-frantic vehemence of Burke, the curses of an army of Tory denunciators, the shrieks of political or religious cowardice, the vindictive Conservatism which in our own days has dwindled down to the Cassandra-like maledictions of a single maudlin peer-for a long while accustomed Englishmen to regard that strange series of events as a catastrophe whose Titanic proportions overwhelmed the sense, an outrage at which heaven and earth might stand aghast, and which struck mankind with awful silence, THE reader, whose historical zeal carries him to the earlier numbers of the Moniteur Universel, as they appeared during the weeks of the Terror, finds himself confronted by one of those half-comical, half-revolting contrasts, for which human nature and especially French human nature- shows from time to time so strange a capacity. In one column he will peruse the long morning list of victims of the Conciergerie,―old men and maidens, rich and poor, strong and weak, alike—a conflagration, lit with no earthly flame, swept promiscuously away under the ruthless blazing at our very doors, and too full of ban of hostility to the common weal, and, ere grand results, one way or the other, to our their doom printed, already on the road to species, for any language but the impassioned death. In the other, as he turns shuddering cry of hope, the solemn denunciation, the away, he will be detained by an almost groan of horror and despair. At length the equally long list of " to-night's entertain- flames died down, the smoke cleared away, ments,❞—grand scenic tableaux, emblematic and it gradually became perceptible that the ballets, hippodromes à la Grecque, masked universe remained intact. The calm, halfballs, the comic opera, the successful vaude-humorous genius of Carlyle, piercing through ville, all proceeding with complete regularity, the golden haze of rhodomontade, and fathand all apparently in the greatest possible request. What, he will exclaim, must be the innate frivolity, the cruel indifference, the latent barbarism of a race which saw nothing strange in such an appalling mixture of tragedy and farce! Were they men or fiends who could be thus easily amused, while death hung over each, and the pavement outside streamed with kindred blood? Who but the traditional" tigre-singe" could skip away, yet bloody-handed from civil slaughter, to applaud the nimble feet of some venal Terpsichore, or the quips and cranks of some fashionable buffoon? We shall run the suspicion, we fear, of the same sort of inhuman versatility if we invite our readers to a less grave, but scarcely less characteristic, aspect of the French Revolution than that with which history has rendered them the most familiar. Friends and foes for the most part, though differing wide as heaven and earth in all beside, have oming the shallows of many a tempest-ridden teacup, marshalled the facts of the story into artistic shape, reduced heroes and demons alike to strictly terrestrial proportions, and proved that the grand convulsion of French society, when cleared of fictitious embellishment, was the handiwork of no superhuman agents, but of irritable, passionate, and, in many cases, extremely feeble men; that vanity, jealousy, and a host of petty instincts, had at least as much to do with it as the grander passions of our nature; and that though, in the evolution of the drama, some natures beyond the ordinary standard of daring and ability disclosed themselves,—and one intellect at least of the very highest order rose upon the surrounding chaos, - yet that most of its results could be accounted for by the activity of commonplace emotions working in a host of inferior minds, and had a side which was far more ludicrous than either terrific or sublime. A few striking person ages stand of course foremost on the stage, | The salon life of Paris-the paradise of an and vindicate in more than one instance the army of ambitious idlers-engendered a tone doubtful honor of monstrosity. Louis XV., of mind in which far less attention was paid an effete Sardana palus, grovelling daily deeper to the accuracy with which an idea was in his sensuality Orleans, rubicund already thought out than to the elegance with which as if with a Tartarean glow; Danton, a por- it was expressed. To achieve a social suctent of ferocious power; Mirabeau, shaking cess was for the aspirant to fame the most his lion-like locks, and preparing, as a giant imperative of all necessities, and for this refreshed with wine, for the subjection of a neatness, brilliancy, promptitude, were alone pigmy race; the stately Austrian lady, im- essential. A race of men grew up astonishperial in her very weaknesses, falling queen-ingly skilful in the fence of words, masters like and undismayed amid curses and gibes; of forcible, pithy expressions, but superficial Corday, hurrying in joyful enthusiasm to her in knowledge, shallow in thought, and utperilous emprise; Roland, in her white robe terly innocent of all earnest intention. They and flowing locks, confronting her accusers, breathed the poisoned air of a vicious society, or returning from the tribunal in more than whose refinement but gave a piquancy to stoical dignity to announce her doom.-these systematic heartlessness and crime. They are indeed the conspicuous personages of the carried their convictions just so far as the tale, but they are not the whole; nor did their fine ladies, whose smiles they sought, considearnestness for good or evil, their strength ered it in good taste to follow; their skeptiof will, the intensity with which they felt, cism began in restlessness, and ended in a the scale upon which they acted, represent sneer; their philosophy was the cynicism of the true character of the great mass of French-faded voluptuaries; their ambition, to live men. Behind them stand inferior performers, in the mouths of a fashionable coteric; their and it was these, after all, that made the kecnést pleasure, to transfix a rival with the Revolution what. we know it to have been. envenomed weapon of a sarcastic epigram. An attitude of mind the very reverse of ma- The criticism passed by one of them upon jestic, a childish passion for display, an in- another might with justice be applied to the satiable thirst for flattery, an exquisite sensi- whole class of which both were members, tiveness to the sting of satire, a passionate and serve as the epitaph for a school of wits: and unthinking rebellion against the inequal- Superficiellement instruit," writes Chamfort ities incidental to human society.-such was of Rulhières, "détaché de tous principes, the thin soil out of which the Revolution l'erreur lui était aussi bonne que la vérité sprang, such were the motive principles which quand elle pouvait faire briller la frivolité shaped its onward course. It was natural de son esprit. Il n'envisageait les grandes enough that a generation bred in an atmos- choses que sous de petits rapports, n'aimait phere like this, should, when it came to be que les tracasseries de la politique, n'était engaged in any considerable undertaking, be- éclairé que de bluettes, et ne voyait dans come from time to time bombastic, theatrical, l'histoire que ce qu'il avait vu dans les petites and extravagant. It was equally natural that intrigues de la société." The French empire men of such a cast, trained by the tradition was, according to the famous definition, a desof centuries in the habits of brilliant conver-potism tempered by epigrams. The fashionsation, and wielding a language of incomparable creed of a large section alike of its asable neatness and pliability, should carry the sailants and supporters might be described art of effective rejoinder to the utmost possi- as cynicism set ablaze with wit. ble perfection, and should assign to witty and epigrammatic language a controversial importance which less impressible natures find it difficult to understand. 66 Two men, conspicuous champions on either side, may be accepted as the types of the class above described; and their performances, although already the object of more This was conspicuously the case in Revolu- literary zeal than their importance might tionary France. A large section of society, seem to merit, are yet so amusing, and at elevating drawing-room repartee into a stand- the same time throw so real a light upon ard of thought, accepted a witticism as a the true history of the times, that we make refutation, and considered that a thing ceased no apology for introducing them in detail to to be true when it began to look ridiculous. our readers' attention: Rivarol, the cham pion of the departing régime; Chamfort, the fanatic of equality, and the assiduous composer and collector of revolutionary facetiæ. The delicate pencil of M. Sainte Beuve has already sketched the characters of both, and enabled us to understand the real affinity of thought and disposition which, under a superficial appearance of antagonism, bound the two men together, and stamped them, though fighting in different camps, as in reality kindred natures. Both have left a long list of excellent stories to attest the justice of a contemporary reputation, and the humor of each will be best appreciated by being introduced in connection with the principal circumstances of his career. ette no doubt infused a new spirit into the dull routine of wickedness which had hitherto prevailed at court. Monsieur de Brissac again figures as the author of an appropriate rejoinder. "Mon Dieu," cried the young dauphiness, as the crowd surged under the balconies of the Tuileries, "Mon Dieu, que de monde !" "Madame," said the cour tier, "sans que Monsieur le Dauphin puisse s'en offenser, ce sont autant d'amoureux.” Full of playfulness and vivacity, the young princess herself was ready and elegant in conversation. Shortly after her arrival at Versailles, she made private arrangements to supplement her extremely defective education; "Il faut," she said, 66 que la dauphine prenne soin de la réputation de l'archiduchesse. It was in no such innocent recreations that the king's remaining powers were meanwhile expended. His notorious excesses excited scandal, alarm, indignation. The base of an equestrian statue, in the Place Louis Quinze, was guarded by four figures representing Peace, Prudence, Strength, and Justice: an unknown hand wrote under it, "O la belle statue! O le beau piedestal ! The society which, half way through the eighteenth century, excited the aspirations of an ambitious Frenchman, was no longer that of Versailles. To the court of Louis XV. survived nothing but the tedious ceremonial and the complete depravity of his great-grandfather's period. The intellectual prestige, which lent a refining splendor to the great monarch's reputation, had vanished along with everything else decent and respectable. The palace was as gloomy as it was corrupt; "quant à la gaieté," says the historian, “il n'en était plus question, le Vice at length dismounted for the last time, foyer de l'esprit et des lumières était à Paris." and the terrified courtiers prepared for a new Madame Campan, indeed, with the applausive allegiance. The details of that terrible deathservility of a royal servant, informs us that bed are universally familiar: one story, howthe king knew how to jest, and occasionally ever, may be worth recording. It is a scene honored his dependents with witticisms which enacted between the Duc de Villequier, first proved "la finesse de son esprit, et l'éléva- gentleman of the chamber, and Monsieur Antion de ses sentiments." As specimens, drouillé, the head surgeon to the court. The however, of the one and the other, she gives king's disease, it will be remembered, renthe stupid slang terms by which the sovereign dered it almost certain death to go near him. was pleased to designate the four princesses The duke thereupon politely suggested to the who had the misfortune to acknowledge his doctor that it was his duty to open and empaternity; and she suggests that his réper- balm the body. The doctor professed his toire of indelicate phraseology was sedulously alacrity for the task, but he added: "Penenlarged by reference to the dictionary when dant que j'opérerai, vous tiendrez la tête; in his mistresses' society. It is pleasant to votre charge vous y oblige." The duke said turn from such a scene to the dignified re- not a word; and Louis the Fifteenth, it is ply made by M. de Brissac, one of the few perhaps superfluous to state, was buried uncourtiers to whom decency had not come to opened and unembalmed. The new court be a joke. The king was rallying him upon had hardly opened when the young queen's the sensitiveness he displayed as to some daring spirits, her impatience of ceremonial, matrimonial catastrophe. "Allons, Mon- her girlish caprices,-above all, the political sieur de Brissac, ne vous fachez pas; c'est intrigues amid which she lived,-began to un petit malheur; ayez bon courage.' endanger her popularity. Her contempt for "Sire," said the injured husband, j'ai etiquette scandalized the fine ladies, and obtoutes les espèces de courage, excepté celui tained for her the perilous nickname of " Mode la honte." The arrival of Marie Antoin-queuse." At her first mourning reception |