The great complaint against clubs is, that they tend towards the germination of selfishness, exclusiveness, and isolation; that they are productive of neglect of home duties in married men, and of irrevocable celibacy in bachelors. Reserving my own private opinion on this knotty point, I may say that it is a subject for sincere congratulation that there are no ladies’ clubs. We have been threatened with them sometimes, but they have always been nipped in the bud. It is curious to see how fiercely this tolerant, liberal, large-headed creature, Man, has waged war against the slightest attempt to establish a club on the part of the gentler sex. From the Parisian malecontents of the first revolution, who broke into the lady assemblies of the _Jacobines_ and _Tricoteuses_, and broke up the clubs in question by the very expeditious process of turning the fair members into the street, after subjecting them to a castigation whose use is ordinarily confined to the nursery; from those ungallant anti-clubbists (they all belonged to clubs themselves, you may be sure) to Mr. Mark Lemon, who, in a _petite comédie_, brought the guns of satire to bear with terrible effect on an incipient agitation for lady clubbism, such institutions, on the part of the ladies, have always been put down, either by violence or by ridicule. The Tyrant Man is even, I am informed, disposed to look with jealousy on the “committees of ladies” which exist in connection with some deserving charities, and on the “Dorcas societies” and “sewing circles” of provincial towns; and all meetings to advocate the rights of woman, he utterly abhors. I daresay that you would very much like to know the name of the particular club, the tableau of which adorns this sheet, and would feel obliged if I would point out the portraits of individual members: you would be very much pleased to be told whether it is the Carlton, the Reform, the Travellers’, the Athenæum, the Union, the United Service Senior or Junior, the Guards, the Oriental, the Oxford and Cambridge, the Parthenon, the Erectheum, the Wyndham, Whyte’s, Boodle’s, or the Army and Navy. No, Fatima; no, Sister Anne. You shall not be told. Clubbism is a great mystery, and its adepts must be cautious how they explain its shibboleth to the outer barbarians. Men have been expelled from clubs ere now for talking or writing about another member’s whiskers, about the cut of his coat, and the manner in which he eats asparagus. I have no desire for such club-ostracism; for though, Heaven help me, I am not of Pall Mall or St. James’s, I, too, have a club whose institutes I revere. “_Non me tua fervida terrent, dicta, Ferox_:” I fear not Jawkins, nor all the Borekins in Borekindom; but “_Dii me terrent, et Jupiter hostis_:” I fear the awful committee that, with a dread complacency, can unclub a man for a few idle words inadvertently spoken, and blast his social position for an act of harmless indiscretion.