No man’s heart is consecrated so entirely to one passion as a gambler’s. Hope with him usurps the place of every other feeling. Hope, however rude the shocks it meets from disappointment, however beaten and baffled, is still there; the flame may waste down to a few embers, but a single spark may live amid the ashes, yet it is enough to kindle up into a blaze before the breath of fortune. At first he lives but for moments like these; all his agonies, all his sufferings, all the torturings of a mind verging on despair are repaid by such brief intervals of luck. Yet each reverse of fate is telling on him heavily; the many disappointments to his wishes are sapping by degrees his confidence in fortune. His hope is dashed with fear; and now commences within him that struggle which is the most fearful man’s nature can endure. The fickleness of chance, the waywardness of fortune, fill his mind with doubts and hesitations. Sceptical on the sources of his great passion, he becomes a doubter on every subject; he has seen his confidence so often at fault that he trusts nothing, and at last the ruling feature of his character is suspicion. When this rules paramount, he is a perfect gambler; from that moment he has done with the world and all its pleasures and pursuits; life offers to him no path of ambition, no goal to stimulate his energies. With a mock stoicism he affects to be superior to the race which other men are running, and laughs at the collisions of party and the contests of politics. Society, art, literature, love itself, have no attractions for him then; all excitements are feeble compared with the alternations of the gaming-table; and the chances of fortune in real life are too tame and too tedious for the impatience of a gambler. I have no intention of winding up these few remarks by any moral episode of a gambler’s life, though my memory could supply me with more than one such--when the baneful passion became the ruin, not of a thoughtless, giddy youth, inexperienced and untried, but of one who had already won golden opinions from the world, and stood high in the ranks which lead to honour and distinction. These stories have, unhappily, a sameness which mars the force of their lesson; they are listened to like the refrain of an old song, and from their frequency are disregarded. No; I trust in the fact that education and the tastes that flow from it are the best safeguards against a contagion of a heartless, soulless passion, and would rather warn my young countrymen at this place against the individuals than the system. ‘Am I in your way, sir?’ said a short, somewhat overdressed man, with red whiskers, as he made room for me to approach the play-table, with a politeness quite remarkable--‘am I in your way, sir?’ ‘Not in the least; I beg you ‘ll not stir.’ ‘Pray take my seat; I request you will.’ ‘By no means, sir; I never play. I was merely looking on.’