The club subscription was generally six guineas a year, and if we may judge by the fact that you could dine off the joint at the Carlton for a shilling, the clubs were much cheaper than they are now. They were also quite as dull. Thackeray describes the dulness of the club, the pride of belonging to it, the necessity of having at least one good club, the _habitués_ of the card-room, the talk, and the scandal. But the new clubs of our day are larger: their members come from a more extended area; there are few young City men who have not their club; and it is not at all necessary to know a man because he is a member of your club. And when one contrasts the cold and silent coffee-room of the new great club, where the men glare at each other, with the bright and cheerful Tavern, where every man talked with his neighbour, and the song went round, and the great kettle bubbled on the hearth, one feels that civilisation has its losses. [Illustration: UNITED UNIVERSITY CLUB, PALL MALL] We have our gambling clubs still. From time to time there comes a rumour of high play, a scandal, or an action in the High Court of Justice for the recovery of one’s character. Baccarat is played all night by the young men; champagne is flowing for their refreshment, and sometimes a few hundreds are lost by some young fellow who can ill afford it. But these things are small and insignificant compared with the gambling club of fifty years ago. [Illustration: CROCKFORD’S, ST. JAMES’S STREET] He who speaks of gambling in the year Thirty-seven, speaks of Crockford’s. Everything at Crockford’s was magnificent. The subscription was ten guineas a year, in return for which the members had the ordinary club- and coffee-rooms providing food and wine at the usual club charges--these were on the ground floor--and the run of the gambling-rooms every night, to which they could introduce guests and friends. These rooms were on the first floor: they consisted of a saloon, in which there was served every night a splendid supper, with wines of the best, free to all visitors. Crockford paid his _chef_ a thousand guineas a year, and his assistant five hundred, and his cellar was reputed to be worth 70,000_l._ There were two card-rooms, one in which whist, écarté, and all other games were played, and a second smaller room, in which hazard alone was played. Every night at eleven the banker and proprietor himself took his seat at his desk in a corner; his _croupier_, sitting opposite to him in a high chair, declared the game, paid the winners, and raked in the money. Crockford’s ‘Spiders’--that is, the gentlemen who had the run of the establishment under certain implied conditions--introduced their friends to the supper and the champagne first, and to the hazard-room next. At two in the morning the doors were closed, and nobody else was admitted; but the play went on all night long. Crockford not only held the bank, but was ready to advance money to those who lost, and