-'s of the temple. A more striking change the same lapse of time never, perhaps, effected in the appearance of any human being: it was at the hunt ball that I saw him on his return to L--shire; and for the joyous, open-countenanced, lusty youth, that for two brief years before had gone forth so full of ingenuous worth and high spirits, there stood, or glided sullenly among those with whom he was associated, but appeared to share no common feeling-a dark and lonely man, whose attenuated form and sunken eve spoke of vigils of unrest. To deep study, and the generous ambition of an energetic spirit, the alteration that all observed was by all attributed; but the true cause was of a far different character. Just previous to Charles career as a law student, peace had thrown open the continent; and a brief sojourn in Paris had implanted the germ of a taste for play, which a London residence was then speedily calculated to ripen into a rooted passion. And here may I be allowed a word of digression. Among prevailing fallacies, there is not one stronger or more eminently unjust than the conventionality that libels the present era as one in which gaming is carried to greater lengths and more widely prac tised than in that which preceded it. The vice may be more shameless-may beard us "in our streets" with a more palpable effrontery; but, so far from being more general and destructive than in the days of our sires, the utter reverse is the fact. If we had no positive demonstration that such was the case, the universal growth of a taste for reading and a thirst for information would at least furnish us with a fair inference. But we have far more positive data for our guide. A few years ago, an unfortunate investigation connected with the Travellers' Club brought that society and its details prominently before the public. The circumstances disclosed upon that occasion clearly proved that it was not an assembly where gambling to any considerable amount was carried on; and yet there was a time when, in one year, the whist account of the Travellers' Club amounted to the enormous sum of six hundred thousand pounds! To return to the habits which the young templar had acquired in the French capital, and their results. Very soon after his return to England he had become a professed gamester. The party from whom I learned this portion of his story was himself deeply initiated in play at the period, and was a winner from him very largely. It appears that his resources (which were considerable) were soon exhausted, and before the visit to Hall, of which I am speaking, his repu tation as a fair and honourable player was more than questioned. A Polish servant, that he had picked up in Paris, was suspected not only of having instructed him in several subtleties of the cards and dice, but as having, in disguise, acted upon many occasions as his confederate at the public tables adjacent to St. James's. This man had accompanied him to L-shire, where, it is hardly necessary to say, all that has been stated of his life and pursuits was unknown even to individual surmise, and, of course, to his own family, who would naturally be the last to hear sinister reports, even had they gained a general publicity. His arrival at his brother's seat took place during the Christmas holidays-a festival, in the country, peculiarly devoted to domestic festivity, serving as a reunion for Hall was a scene good fellowship and social interchanges. of perpetual hospitality and merry-making, scarcely allowing leisure for its inmates to observe the cold reserve and distant courtesy with which the new guest shared, or rather suffered, the gaities which surrounded him. Field sports formed the chief of the morning engagements, and of these he rarely partook, urging want of taste as well as of skill for absenting himself from them. Until the hour for dinner, his own apartments seemed to afford employment for his whole time, occasionally a solitary stroll in the park alone interfering with the uniformity of confinement he had adopted. Thus the winter wore away, and spring arrived; and though for months dwelling beneath the same roof, the brothers had but few opportunities for the renewal of early feelings or the generation of new. Their intercourse-that on the part of the first was marked by a warm ingenuous cordiality; by the guest, these demonstrations were met by no want of courtesy, but by an apathy and apparent abstraction, which was soon observed, and attributed by some to the effect of severe study, as before alluded to, and by others to the existence of an attachment in which love's course did not run smooth. The day appointed by Charles for his return to town had arrived, when an accident occurred, which produced a temporary postponement of his design. On the last day of the season, his brother, towards the close of a severe run, met with a heavy fall, his horse coming down and lying for some time upon him. The casualty was productive of no dangerous consequences, but a wound had been inflicted, which not only imposed a temporary confinement, but required the daily offices of a surgeon. By some chance the village practitioner was absent, and, as Hall was at a considerable distance from the county town, the daily visit of a medical man was attended with much inconvenience. In this dilemma, Charles made offer to his brother of the services of his valet, who possessed a good general knowledge of surgery, having served in some department of the medical staff at an early period of his life. A short trial having proved him adroit at the dressings, &c., and the medical gentleman pronouncing him a fitting substitute, the invalid was committed to his charge, the nesessary salves being prepared and sent as occasion required. The wound, however, did not fare as at first there was reason to expect; it yielded but slowly, if at all, to the mode of treatment pursued; and as the student became anxious to depart, it was arranged that he should go, leaving his servant behind to follow as soon as circumstances would permit his services to be dispensed with. A month elapsed, and real cause of anxiety arose. The injury outwardly received was neither better nor worse, but the general health of the patient declined rapidly. Even those who saw him hourly were startled at the progress of decay and enfeeblement that seemed to stride onwards with ominous velocity; while those who saw him for the first time, after the interval of a few weeks, looked on him as already numbered with the dead. The malady had now assumed too serious a character to admit of an hour's being lost without application to the best advice that the country could afford. Accordingly, a removal to London was recommended, and at once acted upon the invalid offering no objection, nor evincing any desire either for or against the step. From the date of his brother's departure, his case presented the singular anomaly of a man in the prime of life and noon of lustyhood-without apparent ailment of any kind, and quite unconscious of pain or bodily infirmity-hourly and steadily parting with vitality, and passing out of existence, as it were, by a geometrical progression of decay. His disease baffled the combined skill of the metropolitan faculty. It was not consumption; at least, it developed none of the characteristics of that malady, though its effects were as rapid, and evidently would be as fatal. All appetite had forsaken him; a mortal apathy-which even the presence of his young bride and infant soon failed to rouse into temporary sensibility-shrouded all his faculties in a premature grave. The sole desire he gave expression to was to be supplied with his meerschaum, which his Polish attendant was accustomed to prepare for him at the commencement of his illness, and now, probably, was merely required from the strength of habit. Of course it was given; and the mechanical use of it was the only voluntary act by which his consciousness of existence was betrayed. The crisis was not long in arriving; the hour of departure was at hand; and it was preceded by that gleam of passing reason, that flash of sensibility, which so frequently and so mysteriously lights up the twilight of existence. It would be ill to dwell on the tearing asunder of young hearts, whose fibres were woven together-who had never known care but that which told they might be parted! To furnish, were it needed, one example more that human hopes are even as the chaff that the wind scattereth-life like a dream that passeth away-ere three-and-twenty summers had ripened the promise of a goodly harvest, the blight had stricken it: the tomb of a long line of ancestors closed upon the ill-fated lord of· Hall. The death of his brother had wrought no change in the life or pursuits of Charles; on the contrary, his propensity for play had become, if possible, more inveterate than ever, and the reputation of his gaming was daily growing more infamous. His former companions had long ceased to associate with him, though they had not gone the length of withdrawing a passing acknowledgment when chance threw them together in public. The remnants of his fortune had been completely exhausted during his brother's lifetime; and it was known that even the source which had supplied him for a short time, after the melancholy event already related, upon the desperate chance of his surviving the infant heir to the estate (of course upon terms as ruinous as the hazard was— s-all but hopeless) had finally closed against him. Even the dicer's hope no longer remained. His want of funds, and the discovery of several attempts at fraud-in which he was assisted by the Pole, who still adhered to him in the apparent capacity of servant-caused him to be scrupulously excluded from every house of play in the metropolis. Ruin had arrived, and it was whispered that worse had been deserved, and would have betided, but for the exertions of those who, when the peril was extreme, could not forget claims, though ten-fold forfeited. Thus was he circumstanced when, having been nominated one of the guardians of the infant heir of he once more arrived in L-shire. His reception by the widowed lady was courteous, but certainly not cordial. I can perfectly well remember seeing them together at the time (for the most trivial events connected with the parties were indelibly written upon my memory by the awful catastrophe which imparted to them such terrible interest), and feeling that the London lawyer was far from a welcome guest at Hall. miles from The annual spring coursing at Lord's, whose seat is but a few had made me a temporary inmate there, though it was still the house of mourning; the intimacy of our family with that of causing the invitation, which I had been accustomed to receive on the occasion, to be extended even to a breach of the rule which excluded all other visitors. I was not sorry when the termination of the meeting brought the morning for my departure. At fourteen we are not physically suited to the company of those who mourn, and I had found my visit a most lugubrious sojourning. In fact, save at meals, I was quite alone: the young widow excluding herself entirely with her infant son; and the uncle, with his dark, sinister eyes, and cold, repulsive manners, affording, at least, one cause of obligation-that he gave us almost as little of his society as we desired. I can, however, recall the morning arranged for my departure, and I still feel the restlessness of his manner during breakfast; and the ill grace, the annoyance, with which he received my intimation of remaining until after luncheon. It may be that afterevents have given a colouring to these reminiscences; but I think my impressions at that time were as I give them now. Luncheon was concluded, and I had risen to take my leave, when a party of itinerant musicians and jugglers appeared at the window of the room in which we were seated. They were quickly engaged in their performances, and, as the exhibition was not without merit, it was proposed that we should ascend to an upper apartment, whence a better view could be commanded, as we were then on a level with the performers. I know not, at this moment, from whom the proposal came, but it was acted upon; and we stationed ourselves at the windows of a room on the second floor, as the verandah which surrounded the basement story interfered with the view from the floor immediately over it. The exhibition consisted of the usual feats of legerdemain, tumbling, and fire-eating; the actors were two young men, who alternately displayed on the pandeans and big drum; and one, who seemed master of the troop, and who busied himself in preparing something that was intended as a coup de theatre. There were three windows in the room, and, as well as my memory will serve me, the centre one was occupied by the mother, her child, and the nurse; while Charles and I stood at those on either side. That he whom I set down as the master was very earnest in his scrutiny of the party looking on, and that there was a strange abruptness in the commencement of his part of the performance, I confess were afterthoughts; but not the less convinced am I that it was no idle fancy. Two smart strokes upon the drum were followed by half a dozen rapid explosions of no great power, at the last of which something like a small shell burst, and threw out various coloured lights. While these were yet visible, a larger shell was ignited, and instantly we were encompassed with volumes of dense smoke, that shrouded lawn and building in the darkness of night; then succeeded an explosion so terrific, so astounding, that it seemed to rend in pieces the walls within which we stood-and then, O God! shall I ever cease to hear the shriek that would have cleft the roar of Heaven's thunder, or forget the look of stone, that the receding vapours revealed, with which the wretched lady at my side gazed upon the mass of mangled gore that alone remained to her of the child of her widowed idolatry -the Lord of the broad lands of -! THE LIFE OF A JOCKEY, WITH ANECDOTES OF THE TURF. BY LORD WILLIAM LENNOX. [Continued from page 168.] "Of arts, and arms, and love, let others sing; Wreak'd Canna's vengeance on Rome's sternest foe The ring which made and keeps me still her slave. A motley club, at present without rules, Go to Newmarket-there you'll hear them roar, There Satan, touting from behind his ditch, THE VISCOUNT MAIDSTONE. EVENT ALLUDED TO IN OUR LAST CHAPTER COMES OFF-A SLIGHT SKETCH OF CAPTAIN MOSS, ALIAS BENDIGO MOSES-THE CAPTAIN DONE TO A TINDER-SELLING PLATES-A SUGGESTION TO |