number of pages in a book, the number of
bristles in a brush. In those club-houses, the
fairest patrimonies have been wasted, the
noblest names soiled, the most glorious
achievements dragged in the dirt. There,
the miser's son has squandered the old
man's dearly hoarded pieces; there, the
jointure of the widow and the portion of the
orphan have been wasted; there, the seeds of
madness have been sown, and the crop of
dishonesty reaped; there, those dicers' oaths,
so famously false, have been sworn; there,
the Jew bill-discounters and mortgage-mongers
have snuffed their prey as the
vulture does the camel, in Mr. Warren's
picture, and in good time have battened
upon them;—they have been the hells and
hell.

And yet, withal, how fashionably. For, you
must know, Anacharsis, that at the bottom of
the street yonder, is Saint James's Palace,
where kings have lived,—where the band of
the Queen's guards plays daily—where
levees and drawing-rooms are held—where
(faithful to the play traditions of the locality)
public and noble gambling was tolerated,
nay, encouraged, and on birthnights was
under the special auspices of the groom
porter. In St. James's Street, dukes
do not derogate from their rank by
walking with umbrellas under their arms,
and goloshes upon their noble feet. Deans in
full canonicals, marchionesses and countesses
with brocaded trains, field-marshals in their
blazing uniforms, lord mayors and sheriffs in
their robes of office and collars of SS, judges
in their ermine, bishops in their lawn, deputy-
lieutenants in their mysterious uniforms,
right honourables in their Windsor uniforms,
honourables and gentles in court-suits, bag-wigs
and swords; all these may be seen in
Saint James's Street on those Thursdays in
the season on which her gracious Majesty
allows two or three thousand people the
honour of kissing her hand. St. James's
Street, favoured of fashion, you have seen the
boots of Mr. Brummel—those famous boots
the soles of which were blacked as well as
the upper leathers; you have witnessed the
first appearance of starch in fashionable
circles; you have seen the advent, apogee,
and decadence of buckles, pigtails, hair
powder, top-boots and buckskins, Cossack
trousers, hessian boots, D'Orsay hats, Waterford
paletots, the myriad ephemera of the
mode. The greatest dandies of the world
have stood on your club-house steps. You
have rejoiced in the smiles of Mr. Brummel's
"fat friend"—seen "old Q's" rough cheeks—
heard Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's coarse
jokes—Bubb Doddington's niaiseries—Horace
Walpole's maccaroni dillettantism, and
George Selwyn's Tyburn anecdotes. You
have known the Romeo Coates's, the
pea-green Haynes, the Petershams, the bucks, the
beaux, bloods, pretty fellows, fops, maccaronies,
swells, nobs, and butterflies of the beau
monde ever since the house of Brunswick
ascended the throne.

But Play, Anacharsis might ask me. Tell
me about St. James's Street, in its connection
with gambling. Did Fashion bring
Play hither, or did Play follow upon
Fashion's heels? Look, Anarchasis. You
see the stately clubs. What "play" mysteries
the card-tables and billiard-rooms of those
palaces could disclose of the gaming follies of
the present day; it is not my purpose to
inquire. A triple hedge of ballot-boxes,
black-balls, and yearly subscriptions screens
the alumni of the clubs from the impertinent
scrutiny of the profanum vulgus. But time
was, O Anarchasis,—and not so many years
ago, either—when, in St. James's Street
and its purlieus, there were numerous public
club-houses, where black balls were unknown
but blacklegs prevalent, and the only qualification
for entrance to which was the possession
of certain golden feathers, and a
general approximation to the similitude of a
"pigeon."

Yonder is Number three hundred and
three. They are pulling it down now, for the
new Parallelopipedon Clubhouse is to be built
on its site; but fifteen years ago that was the
Cocked Hat Club—a noted gaming-house.
Above the door (up a steep flight of steps) of
the Cocked Hat Club might with advantage
have been written that famous line of Dante's
(stolen, by the way, by the Florentine bard
from a Greek inscription in the style of
Plautus over the the door of a tavern fourteen
hundred years ago), "Lasciate ogni speranza,
voi ch'entrate"—Ye who enter, leave all hope
behind. Closed blinds, closed doors, silence
and mystery reigned in the Cocked Hat Club
by day; but at night the bright gaslight
streamed through the chinks of the shutters;
at night the trusty janitor of the Club posted
himself behind the inner door, and through a
barred wicket surveyed those who sought for
admission, and gave or denied them ingress
at his pleasure. From his decision there was
no appeal. He was a match for twenty
Buffons or Audubons in ornithology. He
knew the hawk and the pigeon at a glance.
He could detect the jay in peacock's feathers
instantaneously. The two first were always
welcome. In the dead of night, when the
private boxes of theatres were shrouded in
ghostly brown holland; when late supper
parties in Haymarket oyster-shops were
breaking up; when the deserted streets,
glad of companionship, repaid the resonance
of policemen's boots and passing cabwheels
with a compound interest of echoes; when
dogs shut up in distant kennels tried the
register ot their voices in long-prolonged
howls; when conscientious cocks began to
divide the latter part of their night's rest into
short naps, remembering that it was almost
time to begin to think about crowing; when
latch-keys were unsteadily sought for; and
the baskets of Covent Garden Market began