An examination of the persons around me, increased the unpleasant feelings which the place had inspired. With the exception of a few, the greater number were evidently superior to their employments. Several of them were young men like my companion--men not yet lost to sensibility, who looked up with some annoyance as they beheld Kingsley accompanied by a stranger. Two or three of the inmates were veteran gamesters. You could see THAT in their business-like nonchalance--their rigid muscles--the manner at once demure and familiar. They were evidently “habitues del l'enfer”--men to whom cards and dice were as absolutely necessary now, as brandy and tobacco to the drunkard. These men were always at play. Even the smallest interval found them still shuffling the cards, and looking up at every opening of the door, as if in hungering anticipation of the prey. At such periods alone might you behold any expression of anxiety in their faces. This disappeared entirely the moment that they were in possession of the victim. That imperturbable composure which distinguished them was singularly contrasted with the fidgety eagerness and nervous rapidity by which you could discover the latter; and I glanced over the operations of the two parties, as they were fairly shown in several sets about the room, with a renewed feeling of wonder how a man so truly clever and strong, in some things, as Kingsley, should allow himself to be drawn so deeply into such low snares; the tricks of which seemed so apparent, and the attractions of which, in the present instance, were obviously so inferior and low. I little knew by what inoffensive and gradual changes the human mind, having once commenced its downward progress, can hurry to the base; nor did I sufficiently allow for that love of hazard itself, in games of chance, which I have already expressed the opinion, is natural to the proper heart of man, belongs to a rational curiosity, and arises, most probably, from that highest property of his intellect, namely, the love of art and intellectual ingenuity. It would be very important to know this fact, since then, instead of the blind hostility which is entertained for sports of this description, by certain classes of moralists among us, we might so employ their ministry as to deprive them of their hurtfulness and make them permanently beneficial in the cause of good education. Kingsley seemed to conjecture my thoughts. A smile of lofty significance expressing a feeling of mixed scorn and humility, rose upon his countenance--as if admitting his own feebleness, while insisting upon his recovered strength, A sentence which he uttered to me in a whisper, at this moment, was intended to convey some such meaning. “It was only when thrown to the earth, Clifford, that the wrestler recovered his strength.”