Observe, it is your word of honour that I have requested, and not your oath. Either with you might and ought to be equally binding, as _in foro conscientiæ_, so every where else. But perhaps you are, or may hereafter be a Member of Parliament, (a propensity whether slight or not for gambling which has been presupposed, renders this the more likely;) and since what is called the Catholic Relief Bill was passed, the obligation of an oath has been done away by the custom of Parliament, honourable Members being allowed to swear with whatever degree of mental reservation they and their Father Confessors may find convenient. A Frenchman some fifteen years ago published a Treatise upon the game of Thirty-One; and which is not always done by Authors, in French or English, thought it necessary to make himself well acquainted with the subject upon which he was writing. In order therefore to ascertain the chances, he made one million five hundred and sixty thousand throws which he computed as equivalent to four years' uninterrupted play. If this indefatigable Frenchman be living, I exhort him to study Beggar-my-Neighbour with equal diligence. There are some games which have survived the Revolutions of Empires, like the Pyramids; but there are more which have been as short-lived as modern Constitutions. There may be some old persons who still remember how Ombre was played, and Tontine and Lottery; but is there any one who has ever heard of Quintill, Piquemdrill, Papillon, L'Ambigu, Ma Commère, La Mariée, La Mouche, Man d'Auvergne, L'Emprunt, Le Poque, Romestecq, Sizette, Guinguette, Le Sixte, La Belle, Gillet, Cul Bas, Brusquembrille, the Game of Hoc, the Reverse, the Beast, the Cuckoo and the Comet,—is there any one, I say, who has ever heard of these Games, unless he happens to know as I do, that rules for playing them were translated from the French of the Abbé Bellecour, and published for the benefit of the English people some seventy years ago by Mr. F. Newbery, a publisher never to be named without honour by those who have read in their childhood the delectable histories of Goody Two-Shoes, and Giles Gingerbread. CHAPTER CXLIII. A FEEBLE ATTEMPT TO DESCRIBE THE PHYSICAL AND MORAL QUALITIES OF NOBS. _Quant à moi, je desirerois fort sçavoir bien dire, ou que j'eusse eu une bonne plume, et bien taillée à commandement, pour l'exalter et louër comme il le mérite. Toutesfois, telle quelle est, je m'en vais l'employer au hazard._ BRANTOME. Such, O Reader were the circumstances concerning Nobs, before his birth, at his birth and upon his naming. Strange indeed would it have been, if anything which regarded so admirable a horse, had been after the manner of other horses. Fate never could a horse provide So fit for such a man to ride; Nor find a man with strictest care So fit for such a horse to bear.[1] [Footnote 1: CHURCHILL.]