This diversion, resorted to at visitings during the twelve days of Christmas, as of ancient custom, continues without abatement during the prolongation of friendly meetings at this season. Persons who are opposed to this recreation from religious scruples, do not seem to distinguish between its use and its abuse. Mr. Archdeacon Butler refers to the “harmless mirth and innocent amusements of society,” in his sermon on “Christian Liberty,” before the duke of Gloucester, and the university of Cambridge, on his royal highness’s installation as chancellor, June 30, 1811. The archdeacon quotes, as a note on that point in his sermon, a remarkable passage from Jeremy Taylor, who says, “that _cards_, &c. are of themselves lawful, I do not know any reason to doubt. He can never be suspected, in any criminal sense, to tempt the Divine Providence, who by contingent things recreates his labour. As for the evil appendages, they are all separable from these games, and they may be separated by these advices, &c.” On the citation, which is here abridged, the archdeacon remarks, “Such are the sentiments of one of the most truly pious and most profoundly learned prelates that ever adorned any age or country; nor do I think that the most rigid of our disciplinarians can produce the authority of a wiser or a better man than bishop Jeremy Taylor.” Certainly not; and therefore an objector to this pastime will do well to read the reasoning of the whole passage as it stands at the end of the archdeacon’s printed sermon: if he desire further, let him peruse Jeremy Taylor’s “advices.” Cards are not here introduced with a view of seducing parents to rear their sons as gamblers and blacklegs, or their daughters to “a life of scandal, an old age of cards;” but to impress upon them the importance of “not morosely refusing to participate in” what the archdeacon refers to, as of the “harmless mirth and innocent amusements of society.” Persons who are wholly debarred from such amusements in their infancy, frequently abuse a pleasure they have been wholly restrained from, by excessive indulgence in it on the first opportunity. This is human nature: let the string be suddenly withdrawn from the overstrained bow, and the relaxation of the bow is violent.