_Miss Ilex._ Quadrille is played with forty cards: tredrille usually with thirty: sometimes, as in Pope's Ombre, with twenty-seven. In forty cards, the number of trumps is eleven in the black suits, twelve in the red:{1} in thirty, nine in all suits alike.{2} In twenty-seven, they cannot be more than nine in one suit, and eight in the other three. In Pope's Ombre spades are trumps, and the number is eleven: the number which they would be if the cards were forty. If you follow his description carefully, you will find it to be so. 1 Nine cards in the black, and ten in the red suits, in addition to the aces of spades and clubs, Spadille and Basto, which are trumps in all suits. 2 Seven cards in each of the four suits in addition to Spadille and Basto. _Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Why, then, we can only say, as a great philosopher said on another occasion: The description is sufficient 'to impose on the degree of attention with which poetry is read.' _Miss Ilex._ It is a pity it should be so. Truth to Nature is essential to poetry. Few may perceive an inaccuracy: but to those who do, it causes a great diminution, if not a total destruction, of pleasure in perusal. Shakespeare never makes a flower blossom out of season. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey are true to Nature in this and in all other respects: even in their wildest imaginings. _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Yet here is a combination by one of our greatest poets, of flowers that never blossom in the same season-- Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansie freakt with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, To deck the lauréat hearse where Lycid lies. And at the same time he plucks the berries of the myrtle and the ivy. _Miss Ilex._ Very beautiful, if not true to English seasons: but Milton might have thought himself justified in making this combination in Arcadia. Generally, he is strictly accurate, to a degree that is in itself a beauty. For instance, in his address to the nightingale-- Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, I woo to hear thy even-song, And missing thee, I walk unseen, On the dry smooth-shaven green. The song of the nightingale ceases about the time that the grass is mown. _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ The old Greek poetry is always true to Nature, and will bear any degree of critical analysis. I must say I take no pleasure in poetry that will not. _Mr. MacBorrowdale._ No poet is truer to Nature than Burns, and no one less so than Moore. His imagery is almost always false. Here is a highly-applauded stanza, and very taking at first sight--