Scandals there were, of course. Men gambled away the whole of their great estates; they loaded their property with burdens in a single night which would keep their children and their grandchildren poor. They grew desperate, and became hawks on the lookout for pigeons; they cheated at the card-table (read the famous case of Lord De Ros in this very year); they were always being detected and expelled, and so could no more show their faces at any place where gentlemen congregated; and sank from Crockford’s to the cheaper hells, such as the cribs where the tradesmen used to gamble, those frequented by City clerks, by gentlemen’s servants, and even those of the low French and Italians. They were illegal cribs, and informers were always getting money by causing the proprietors to be indicted. It was said of Thurtell, after he was hanged for murdering Weare, that he had offered to murder eight Irishmen, who had informed against these hells, for the consideration of 40_l._ a head. When they were suffered to proceed, however, the proprietors always made their fortunes. No doubt their descendants are now country gentry, and the green cloth has long since been folded up and put away in the lumber-room, with the rake and the croupier’s green shade and his chair, and the existence of these relics is forgotten. [Illustration: S. T. Coleridge -SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE-] CHAPTER XIII. WITH THE WITS. The ten years of the Thirties are a period concerning whose literary history the ordinary reader knows next to nothing. Yet a good deal that has survived for fifty years, and promises to live longer, was accomplished in that period. Dickens, for example, began his career in the year 1837 with his ‘Sketches by “Boz”’ and the ‘Pickwick Papers;’ Lord Lytton, then Mr. Lytton Bulwer, had already before that year published five novels, including ‘Paul Clifford’ and ‘The Last Days of Pompeii.’ Tennyson had already issued the ‘Poems, by Two Brothers,’ and ‘Poems chiefly Lyrical.’ Disraeli had written ‘The Young Duke,’ ‘Vivian Grey,’ and ‘Venetia.’ Browning had published ‘Paracelsus’ and ‘Strafford;’ Marryat began in 1834; Carlyle published the ‘Sartor Resartus’ in 1832. But one must not estimate a period by its beginners. All these writers belong to the following thirty years of the century. If we look for those who were flourishing--that is, those who were producing their best work--it will be found that this decade was singularly poor. The principal name is that of Hood. There were also Hartley Coleridge, Douglas Jerrold, Procter, Sir Archibald Alison, Theodore Hook, G. P. R. James, Charles Knight, Sir Henry Taylor, Milman, Ebenezer Elliott, Harriet Martineau, James Montgomery, Talfourd, Henry Brougham, Lady Blessington, Harrison Ainsworth, and some others of lesser note. This is not a very imposing array. On the other hand, nearly all the great writers whom we associate with the first thirty years of the century were living, though their best work was done.