Prophetic glances!-he has left again His sacred home, to seek the gamester's den!— Ah, aptly term'd a hell, for oft Despair And Suicide, twin brothers, revel there! Awake, infatuate youth, for Death is nigh, Guides the dread card, and shakes the fateful die! All that thou lovest perish in that blow! N. T. C. GAMING. "The wife of a gamester came with Death in her looks to seek her husband where he had been playing for two days.-' Leave me,' he said, 'I shall see you again, perhaps.'-He did indeed come to her; she was in bed with his last child at her breast,-'Rise,' said he; 'the bed on which you lie is no longer yours.' M. de Saulx on the Passion of Gaming. THE passion for gaming is as universal as it is pernicious: avarice is its origin, and as all human hearts are more or less avaricious, a propensity to gambling is confined to no peculiar country. The savage and the sons of refinement, the scientific and the ignorant, alike admit it within their bosoms. There appears to be a delicious allurement connected with the anticipation of winning, that counteracts all qualmy doubts, and for awhile deprives the soul of its genial sympathies by enslaving it to oblivious selfishness. Some writers have endeavoured to confine the prevalence of gambling to those climes where the frigid sternness of the atmosphere occasions a mental torpor, which is to be relieved only by the perturbations of the heart. But existing facts are a confutation to this limitation; for whether we cast our eye over the fertile provinces of China, or turn to the uncultivated islands in the Pacific Ocean, we find man yielding himself up to the same destructive passion, and entailing on himself consequences equally appalling.* A more heart-sickening spectacle cannot well be * The Siamese, Sumatrans, and Malayans are warmly addicted to gambling; and the former will sell themselves and families to discharge their gambling debts. The Chinese play by night and day; and when ruinously unsuccessful, hang themselves. The Japanese have secured themselves from yielding to their innate fondness for gambling, by edicting a law, "That whoever ventures his money at play, shall be put to death." Speaking of a running-match performed by the inhabitants of some islands in the Pacific Ocean, Cooke remarks, “We saw a man beating his breast and tearing his hair in the violence of rage, for having lost three hatchets at one of these races, and which he had purchased with nearly half his property." The ancients too, were gamblers. The Persians, Grecians, Romans, Goths, and Vandals, may be adduced as examples. To the wasteful partiality of the Romans for gambling, Juvenal strongly alludes in his Sat. I. :— "Neque enim loculis comitantibus itur, Ad casum tabulæ, posita sed luditur arca." Among the modern nations, the French and English are mournful instances of the horrors and depravities arising from gaming. The annals of every family abound with their sad mementos. Gamester and cheater were synonymous terms in the days of Ben Jonson and Shakspeare:-late facts will warrant a continuation of the synonyms. Formerly, gambling-houses were established on a more systematic and official plan than the hells of the present times. The following is but a partial list of the officers then in attendance:-A commissioner, a director, an operator, two croupers (who gathered the money for the bank), two puffs, a clerk, a squib, a flasher, a dunner, a captain, a Newgate solicitor, an usher, with linkboys, coachmen, &c. &c. imagined than a room replete with regular gambling parties, each engaged at their particular game :—take, for instance, one of the metropolitan hells. An unvitiated stranger, on his first entrance there, may learn a lesson that will remain indelible while the soul is capable of remembering former sympathies. The mantling glimmer of the various lights, the hushful silence of the room,―rarely disturbed but by the passive footfalls of waiters, and dismal sighs escaping from sorrowed hearts,—the mournful associations that wait on every unhallowed spot, and the deepening consciousness that misery is busied in pensive revels-all commingling, sink on the visitant's soul with appalling reality. Though untainted himself, his tenderest pity and most melancholy presentiments must be awakened for the deluded victims of a selfish passion. While standing by and gazing at one of the attentive gamesters, what room for moralizing compassion! Observe his glittering eye, that rolls so wildly under its fretful lid, the alternate wrinkling and relaxing of his moistened brow, his baking lips, and their frequent despairing mutter of convulsive anguish! His countenance is the faithful mirror of his soul: its internal passions may be seen working there. Now, a trepid gleam of joy illumes his sunken cheek,— again the smile dissolves, and the gloomy sullenness of disappointment sheds there its monotony of shade. His visage may be compared to a lake on a breezy spring-day, where dizzy sunbeams mellow for a while its placid surface, to be succeeded by pattering rain-drops, and the rippling play of ruffled water. Thus pleasure awhile lights up the gamester's face, the features glow as it passes over them, and then relapse into the emotions of deep-rooted melancholy! Miserable feelings are not only betrayed in the countenance: they are perceived in each movement of the hand, the peevish grasp of the dice-box, or the dubious selection of a card, in the arrangement of the tricks and disposition of the counters: the whole air of his denotes a mental struggle. Suppose he be the momentary winner :even then his delight is but a mockery of felicity, while the loosing adversary awes down its demonstration by the livid contortions of his visage, and the patient sternness of avarice writhing for speedy retaliation. He who endures the pangs of unmerited woe, may have a hapless lot; but the very consciousness of its being undeserved, is a source of fitful consolation. Like the day-god, which, amid the dark thun |