The following appears to be levelled at an individual of no small reputation in his day, and whose memory is likely to outlast Dr. Rennell's. "What is it that converts those designed by Providence to be the GUARDIANS and PROTECTORS into the BANE and CURSE of their country? I will answer, the GAMING TABLE. The reverses here every moment occurring unite beggared fortunes, mortified pride, callous baseness, and inflamed appetites, directing their joint operations to the destruction of that common mother which gave them birth. And here I wish to be rightly understood--that with a frugal, active, dignified poverty, the discharge of public duty is perfectly compatible. Such a poverty was highly reverenced in the best ages of Pagan antiquity, as the nurse of every great and useful exertion; but as distant as light from darkness is such a poverty from that degraded, malevolent, abject MENDICITY, the offspring of vice, the organ of faction, and the parent of universal prostitution and venality." Dr. Parr, in his copy of this discourse, wrote the following note, which may serve as a tail-piece to the present chapter: "Dr. Rennell is said, with his own hand, to have put a copy of this animated sermon under the knocker of Mr. Fox's door in South street. I could wish the story to be untrue. But the eloquent preacher did not employ his great talents in a sermon against Sabbath-breaking, though his illustrious patron, Mr. Pitt, had lately fought a duel with Mr. Tierney on Wimbledon Common." FOOTNOTES: [109] Heller, Vom Ursprung der Spielkarten, in der Geschichte der Holzschneidekunst, s. 307. [110] "Interim vero jocis et ludo, minime concito, vacandum, ne sensus cogitatione occupati concoctionem impediant. Careat jocus (quem urbanum, facetum, modestum volo) dicacitate, scurrilitate, mordacitate. Nolo mimos; non proterviam; non dicteria; non convicia, unde ira et indignatio, et plerumque magna rixa oritur. Ludus sit talis, tessera, saccho (ut nostra appellatione utur), _carthis variis imaginibus pictis_. Absit inter ludendum omnis fraus et avaritia, qua illiberalior et destestandus fit ludus, nec ullam affert ludenti voluptatem; cum timor, ira, et immensa habendi cupiditas variis modis ludentes cruciet." The first edition of Platina's treatise, De Honesta Voluptate, appeared at Venice, 1475. The preceding extract is from the second edition, printed in 1480.--Platina was born in 1421, and died in 1481. [111] "Non mirum ergo ob hujus planctæ excellentem prærogativam si in taxillis felicem jactum, non Jovem qui major fortuna putatur, sed Venerem nuncupavit antiquitas. Unde Propertius, Me quoque per talos Venerem quærente secundos, Semper damnosi subsiliere Canes. Canem vero et Caniculam damnosum jactum etiam siderum comparatione appellaverunt. Sic Persius: ... Damnosa canicula quantum Raderet.