The joy and delight of my childhood was centered in the house of four spinsters of the good old times, who, during a period of between fifty and sixty years, passed “in single blessedness,” and with claims to respectability, as ample as their means of supporting it were scanty; had waged the most resolute and successful war against melancholy, and were now the seasoned veterans of mirth. Poverty being no source of degradation among us, these ladies had a pretty numerous circle of friends, who, with their young families, frequented their house--one of the old, large, and substantial buildings which, for a trifling rent, may be had in this town, and which care and neatness have kept furnished for more than a century, without the addition or substitution of a single article. In a lofty drawing-room, hung round with tapestry, the faded remnants of ancient family pride, the good old ladies were ready, every evening after sunset, to welcome their friends, especially the young of both sexes, to whom they showed the most good-natured kindness. Their scanty revenue did not allow them to treat the company with the usual refreshments, except on particular days--an expense which they met by a well-planned system of starvation, carried on throughout the year, with the utmost good humour. An ancient guitar, as large as a moderate violoncello, stood up in a corner of the room, ready at a moment’s notice, to stir up the spirits of the young people into a dance of the Spanish _Seguidillas_, or to accompany the songs which were often _forfeited_ in the games that formed the staple merriment at this season. The games, in truth, which in England are nearly forgotten, even within their last asylums--ladies’ schools and nurseries,--were thirty years ago a favourite amusement in this country. That they have, at some period, been common to a great part of Europe, will not be doubted by any one who, like myself, may attach such importance to this subject as to be at the trouble of comparing the different sports of that kind which prevail in France, England, and Spain. I wish, indeed, that antiquarians were a more jovial and volatile race than I have found them in general; and that some one would trace up these amusements to their common source. The French, with that spirit of system and scientific arrangement which even their perfumers, _Marchandes de Modes_, and dancing-masters display, have already, according to a treatise now lying before me, distributed these games into _Jeux d’action_ and _Jeux d’esprit_.