Persian dress--the march of mind cannot brook a folio! The education of Col. R---- was deeply tainted with the forgotten glory of his library--a wild flower blooming amid the silence of a neglected ruin. He had literature without pedantry, learning without arrogance; and being neither author nor compiler, he yet mingled on equal terms of compliment and civility with the gifted names of his land. Proud pre-eminence of genius! respected even in its slumbers. Though its possessor be unknown to print, though his pen sleep in idleness, like the prophet, the sacred flame plays around his brow and lightens up his onward course. In his society I drank from a deep stream of {256} intellect pure and unalloyed happiness--yet dashed into bitterness by the remembrance that under his protection I had first visited a gaming table--though he had carried me thither more for the purpose of portraying human character than of making me either the proselyte or victim of its insidious vice. Come Lionel! said he, gently touching my shoulder, as I was deeply absorbed in the unhallowed rites of the blind goddess--leave this dangerous place! Your warm blood and ardent temperament cannot withstand its harlotry. Crush in its infancy that juggling fiend, which martyrs the pride of mind--the dignities of virtue, the immunities of education, and the consolations of religion. His warning voice fell on a sodden ear. Seated at a long table, in a magnificent saloon blazing with lights and ornamented with costly curtains of damask, whose billowy drapery dropped over grotesque and luxurious furniture, I bowed with prostrate devotion to the idol of Chance. I was in the temple of suicide--the hell of earth; and inebriated with its deadly vapor, I saw not the thronging crowd, whose passion-stricken countenances alternately displayed the rapid transitions from joy to sadness, from successful cupidity to luckless despair. I went through the usual vicissitudes of the game. I won. Success made me bold, failure excited me to more and more dangerous enterprise. I had drawn on our tobacco merchant until my bills were protested, nor could I ask from Col. R---- the wages of humanity. I paid a heavy premium to one of the loungers of the table, to teach me a system by which I might always win. Duped by its deceitful sophistry, I risked my all--my watch, breast-pin, and all the jewelry of my dress were successively staked and lost. My hand was on the golden locket consecrated as the gift of Isa Gordon. With a painful struggle I preserved it from the gripe of despair, and quitted the accursed table a bankrupt and a beggar!