But on common evenings dedicated to neither of the recreations which we have just mentioned, we accompany our fair party to the grand fashionable rendezvous on the Steyne. After promenading on this delightful spot, hearing important and interesting remarks on this one’s dress, and that one’s face, and t’other one’s ancles, and listening to the music, first of the librarian’s concert, and afterwards of a solo from a blind fidler, we adjourn to the library. There the morning papers, now arrived from London, afford Mr. Spout another opportunity of displaying his elocution; and Dr. Fatgoose his political wisdom: but both now attract not the attention which their morning efforts excited. The indolent indifference of early hours now give place to the anxious cares of the night. Now the librarian is considering the chances of the dice, preparing for the principal business of a Brighton trader; in short, he is collecting his troops, and making his dispositions for commencing the gaming, encouraged not merely by the probable hope, but the undoubted certainty that whoever may be entitled to the victory, he himself shall obtain the spoils. As the general principle of gambling is to acquire our neighbour’s property without giving him an equivalent, raffling, as practised at the watering places, especially at Brighton, is dexterously calculated for picking the pockets of visitors, in order to fill the pockets of the inhabitants; and, indeed, is to Brighton shopkeepers a greater source of revenue than any other craft which they exercise, with all the benefit of monopoly and extortion. The raffle-holder gains without any risk: his profits are always twofold, and by a little additional dexterity of fraud, may be threefold. In the first place, the article to be disposed of is a toy, which if sold in the shop, (or called for gentility’s sake the library,) would at the retail price fetch about double prime cost. But the subscription for the raffle is, in the second place, at least double the retail amount: this is the second profit. Thirdly, by the prescribed œconomy of Brighton raffles, the subscribers do not all throw together, but at different times, as they happen to be present. By adding a fictitious name, a librarian can easily pretend that the name in question has thrown the winning number. Thus, for instance, if a netting-box cost the raffle-holder one guinea, if sold according to the rate of Brighton profits, it might fetch no more than two guineas, but by raffle it will produce four; so that if the real winner should be too sharp for the fictitious name to come in, the holder has, at the worst, three guineas of clear profit, besides the daily and almost hourly return of his money. Every subscription for one shilling adds six-pence certain to the gambling branch of the librarian’s revenue, besides three-pence more to the mercantile part, in the exorbitant profits on the disposal of his goods. In the best