(12) The clochier in Paul's Churchyard--a bell-house, four square, builded of stone, with four bells; these were called _Jesus_ Bells. The same had a great spire of timber, covered with lead, with the image of St Paul on the top, but was pulled down by Sir Miles Partridge, Kt, in the reign of Henry VIII. The common speech then was that he did set L100 upon a cast at dice against it, and so won the said clochier and bells of the king. And then causing the bells to be broken as they hung, the rest was pulled down, and broken also. This man was afterwards executed on Tower Hill, for matters concerning the Duke of Somerset, in the year 1551, the 5th of Edward VI.--Stowe, B. iii. 148. 'Sir Arthur Smithhouse is yet fresh in memory. He had a fair estate, which in a few years he so lost at play, that he died in great want and penury. Since that Mr Ba--, who was a clerk in the Six-Clerks Office, and well cliented, fell to play, and won by extraordinary fortune two thousand pieces in ready gold; was not content with that, played on, lost all he had won, and almost all his own estate; sold his place in the office, and at last marched off to a foreign plantation, to begin a new world with the sweat of his brow; for that is commonly the destiny of a decayed gamester--either to go to some foreign plantation, or to be preferred to the dignity of a _box-keeper_. 'It is not denied but most gamesters have, at one time or other, a considerable run of winning, but such is the infatuation of play, I could never hear of a man that gave over a winner--I mean, to give over so as never to play again. I am sure it is _rara avis_, for if you once "break bulk," as they phrase it, you are in again for all. Sir Humphry Foster had lost the greatest part of his estate, and then playing, as it is said, _FOR A DEAD HORSE_, did, by happy fortune, recover it again; then gave over, and wisely too.'(13) (13) Harleian Misc. ii. 108. The sequel will show the increase of gambling in our country during the subsequent reigns, up to a recent period. Thus, then, the passion of gaming is, and has ever been, universal. It is said that two Frenchmen could not exist even in a desert without _QUARRELLING;_ and it is quite certain that no two human beings can be anywhere without ere long offering to 'bet' upon something. Indolence and want of employment--'vacuity,' as Dr Johnson would call it--is the cause of the passion. It arises from a want of habitual employment in some material and regular line of conduct. Your very innocent card-parties at home--merely to kill _TIME_ (what a murder!) explains all the apparent mystery! Something must be substituted to call forth the natural activity of the mind; and this is in no way more effectually accomplished, in all indolent pursuits, than by those _EMOTIONS AND AGITATIONS_ which gambling produces.