Much capital has from time to time been drawn by philanthropic gentlemen out of what took place at "Crockford's," when the amounts at stake were practically unlimited, a bank of £10,000 being put down every evening at about eleven o'clock, the chief game of the house being French hazard. Play of some kind was always, however, going forward in every room of the large establishment, which was lit by hundreds of wax candles all night long. Sad pictures have been painted of the ruin that overtook men in the St. James' club-house; but many of these men who went there were simply fools who brought on their own fate, and who, had they not been ruined at Crockford's, would have been ruined in some other hell. There were plenty of such places, and although public gambling-houses are now not tolerated, it is quite certain that card-playing goes on nightly in all the clubs in London, and that in several of them large sums of money are lost and won. Crockford was not in any degree worse than his neighbours, and no one has ventured to say that undue advantage of any kind was ever taken of the persons who frequented his house by the proprietor or his servants. It should be kept in mind as well that visitors to Crockford's went there to try and obtain his money, and if in doing so they lost their own, they scarcely require to be sympathised with. It is not my intention to defend gambling, or to become the apologist of Crockford, but such matters should be looked straight in the face, because, if there be sin in the matter, it is unfortunately of universal occurrence and among all classes of society; but surely it is not more sinful to stake one's sovereign on the turning up of a particular card than it is to do so on the rise or fall of the stock of a particular railway, or the loan bonds of some foreign country. RACING ROGUERIES. I. "The turf is so beset with knaves that when you go racing you are robbed when you least expect to be robbed, and that too by men whom you would least expect to rob you." So wrote a racing commentator sixty years since, and the same sentence might be written to-day, with a still greater chance of hitting the nail on its head. When, half a century ago, some isolated case of turf fraud of a high degree of enormity became public, a prodigious outcry was raised regarding the circumstance--as would doubtless be done to-day--by a section of turfites, much indignation being usually expressed, especially by those not "in the swim"; but to-day racing rogueries are too numerous, too varied, too much a matter of course to attract much attention, and for this among other reasons, namely, that "they all do it." It may well be said as regards the turf and its surroundings, "Let him who is among you without sin cast the first stone."