THERE can be no doubt that the vice of gambling is on the increase amongst the English working-classes. Of this no better proof is afforded than in the modern multiplication of those newspapers specially devoted to matters “sportive.” Twenty years ago there were but three or four sporting newspapers published in London; now there are more than a dozen. It would, however, be unfair to regard the rapid growth of these questionable prints as an undoubted symptom of the deepening depravity of the masses. The fact is this: that though the national passion for gambling, for betting, and wagering, and the excitement of seeing this or that “event” decided, has increased of late, it is chiefly because the people have much more leisure now than of yore. They must have amusement for their disengaged hours, and they naturally seek that for which they have the greatest liking. It is a comforting reflection, however, that in their sports and pastimes Englishmen, and especially Londoners, of the present generation, are less barbarous than those of the last. Setting horse-racing aside, anyone who now takes up for perusal the ordinary penny sporting paper will find therein nothing more repugnant to his sensibilities, as regards human performers, than records of swimming, and cricket, and running, and walking, and leaping; and as regards four-footed creatures, the discourse will be of dogs “coursing” or racing, or killing rats in a pit. In the present enlightened age we do not fight cocks and “shy” at hens tied to a stake at the Shrove-Tuesday fair; neither do we fight dogs, or pit those sagacious creatures to bait bulls. In a newspaper before me, not a quarter of a century old, there is a minute and graphic account of a bull-baiting, at which in the pride of his heart the owner of a bull-dog did a thing that in the present day would insure for him twelve months of hard labour on the treadmill, but which in the “good old time” was merely regarded as the act of a spirited sportsman. A white bull-dog, “Spurt” by name, had performed prodigies of valour against a bear brought before him and before a crowded audience. Finally, however, the exhausted creature bungled in a delicate act of the performance, and those who had bet against the dog exasperated its master by clapping their hands. “D’ye think that he can’t do it?” roared the dog’s owner; “why, I’ll take ten to one in twenties that he does it on three legs—with one foot chopped off.” “Done!” somebody cried. Whereon the valiant bulldog owner called for a cleaver, and setting the left fore-paw of his faithful dog on the ledge of the pit, he hacked it off at a blow. Then instantly he urged the creature at the bear again, and, raging with pain, it at once sprang at its shaggy opponent and pinned it.