feverish excitement, consequent upon their gaming propensities, make sundry high bets over their port and claret; and then, again, when the tables were drawn, they would rush to the card-room, and, spending the watches of the night in play, refuse to move till the serving-maids of the establishment, coming down to set the apartments in order, forced them to their pillows.

We remember a lady of rank, who, after a life spent at the cardtable, died with the pack in her hand. As regularly as the season came round, she drove to the Dragon with her lovely daughters, desired the postilion, after setting down herself and imperials, to take the young ladies into a boarding-school; after which, returning the bow of the obsequious host, and shaking hands with the various parties she was acquainted with, she would walk straight into the card-room, cut in, and commence play.

We also knew a devoted son of the clergy, one of the finest preachers of the day, who was wont to treat his congregation with a sermon during morning service, upon the enormity of gaming; after which, he would ascend his curricle, drive to the Dragon, and pass the entire remainder of the sabbath behind the closed blinds of the cardroom, absorbed body and soul in whist, or setting the fee-simple of his living upon a turn of the dice-box.

We recollect a rich Indian nabob, who successively lost three fortunes at Harrowgate, Cheltenham, and Buxton.

It was, however, highly amusing (at this period) to take an occasional glance at the countenances of these devotees, and watch the ebb and flow of their several fortunes. Lady, who, I have before said, died at the card-table, would at times have her lap filled with banknotes, which she had no leisure to count. This lady was wont to play frequently for a cool hundred a game, and at the same time bet with those near her table. Nay, we have heard, that on one occasion she continued playing two whole nights and days at piquet with a German noble, to whom she lost a large sum, when quitting the tables to join the company assembled at supper, after a ball, she nearly fainted from exhaustion and chagrin.

Quietly, and with determined perseverance, would the devoted slaves of this absorbing vice continue their incessant cutting, dealing, shuffling, and playing. Hour after hour through the day were the sun's rays excluded from their pallid features, and hour after hour, during the night, they pursued the same employment. The orchestra brayed out its joyous strains unheard or unmarked-the merry dance was kept up in the Tea-room, beside which they played-the waltz was ended, the supper over-and still, diamonds, hearts, spades, and clubs, seemed to afford renewed interest every moment.

Harrowgate, like many other watering places, has fallen away. It was in our nonage that we used to visit it in its palmy state; during the chequered light of maturer years we have lost sight of that and other places of amusement. But once, we returned to this place after a long interval, and it seemed that we met the ghosts of our departed joys. A new race had sprung up,-mirth and jollity seemed banished. The roar of mirth no longer was heard at the tables. The card-room was deserted, the billiard-rooms were empty; and although there seemed a decent sprinkling of guests at the hotels, compared with the choice and master spirits of former times, the assemblage was a quakers' meeting: they appeared "to have lost all mirth, and

foregone all custom of exercise." It is indeed, as Mrs. Trollope observes, always the who, and not the where that makes the difference of enjoyments in a public place. The waters smelt as villanously as ever; the heather bloomed upon the common, where stood the various inns, but the spirit of the place seemed gone with its former visitors; the pegs had slipped, the music ceased, and Harrowgate (as a place of amusement) was naught.

In former days, the road before the terrace of the Dragon presented a most animated scene, being filled, after breakfast, with gay equipages-fours-in-hand, curricles, and tandems; whilst whole bevies of ladies and attendant cavaliers were to be seen mounting their palfreys, to excursionize to the various places of interest in the neighbourhood; added to which, there was always some device or divertissement got up by the master of the revels, to pass away the long age between the morning meal and the dinner hour. At one part of the season, races were held upon the common, and if the running was not quite so good as at Newmarket or Doncaster, the fun was greater: the genteel attendance and elegant equipages on the course, made the scene gay and animated in the extreme. Most of the visitors at the different hotels were wont to drive to the heath, on such occasions; besides which, many of the gentry living around, made a point of frequenting these races. Almost all were known to each other, and the lone common, with its Scotchified belt of pines on one side, and the extensive and well-wooded view on the other, appeared like the scene in Scott's "Old Mortality," when Lady Margaret Bellenden and her party attended at the Wappershaw. Rural sports for the amusement of the more rustic gathering, were also carried on with some spirit after the races, and between the heats. Bumpkins were to be seen chasing pigs with soaped tails at one part, while strapping wenches ran a well contested race for a chemisette; after which, rough-headed louts clanıbered up a greased pole for the leg of mutton which bid defiance to their efforts at its top. Then there were jingling matches, in which some nineteen fellows, being blindfolded, were started to catch the twentieth, whose eyes were uncovered, and who was accommodated with a sheep-bell tied between his legs. Men also were bribed to plunge their heads for half-crowns in tubs of water, till they were halfdrowned, and subsequently to dive into bags of flour and grope for shillings, till they were half-choked. Besides there were many other rural sports and diversions, since refined away, voted vulgar, and forgotten.

We remember many specimens of the English Esquire of the old school too, who used to visit this watering place every season,-gentlemen with manners as peculiar to their day, and as refined, as their costume of a former century was quaint and characteristic gentlemen of the Grandison school, who would keep their hats in the air whilst addressing a lady; and conduct her into a room, not tucked under one arm like a country lass at a hop, but hand in hand, as if just about to lead off in the minuet de la cour,-gentlemen, who would no more think of sitting down to dinner without donning their ribbed silks, than they would be likely to appear at breakfast out of their buckskins, buckled tops, quaint-cut blue coats, pomatummed side locks, and well tied pig-tails.

Others again there were, rough, eccentric humourists, hearty old bucks, rough and ready as Squire Western himself, and speaking in a

dialect as provincial as the clodpoles on their estates,-characters now no longer to be met with, and who seemed the last of their race. There were also several varieties of the Buck Parson, with here and there a representative of the Old Soldier of half a century previous to the Peninsular triumphs,-warriors who were majors on full pay when they cried for more pap "in the nurses' arms," and who were wont to set their squadrons in the field when the most arduous duties of the dragoon officer consisted in carrying three and four bottles beneath his belt nightly, with a proper and dignified deportment.

Many of the great sporting characters of the day also had seats in the vicinity of Harrowgate. These gentlemen would often drive over, mix in the amusements of the company, and carry off their friends to their homes. The great sportsman of his day (Thornton) brought his hawks upon one occasion, and flew them upon the common; after which he invited the assemblage to return with him to Thornville Royal, and entertained them with a degree of splendour not often seen in those days.

The Colonel, indeed, lived in a style of almost regal magnificence at that period; his hawks, hounds, and stud have perhaps never been equalled before or since. He was the wittiest man of his day, too; no table at which he sat but was in a roar from beginning to end of the feast, and his hospitality was exercised in a style peculiar to himself and his generous spirit; magnums of port and claret, holding a dozen bottles each, graced the festive board, and a loving cup revolved around, containing a dozen of champagne in its capacious depths. On these occasions there was no lack of amusement; the Colonel's voice made the halls echo to the hunter's cry, and as " his eye begot occasion for his wit," his joyous spirit turned everything to mirth. The very spirit of fun twinkled in his laughing visage. He seemed as if he could have "jested in an hospital, and moved wild laughter in the throat of death." Perhaps some of our readers may, even yet, remember the circumstances of the great sportsman's removal from his hunting grounds at Faulknor's Hall, upon the Wolds of Yorkshire, to his seat in Wiltshire, when he made a progress through the land like some cavalier of olden times upon the march. First came the huntsmen, whippers-in, and grooms with various packs of dogs, as celebrated in that county as the hounds of Theseus; next walked the falconers in their green attire, carrying the hawks hooded upon their frames; after them marched the trainers with a whole squadron of thorough-breds, racers, hunters, and hackneys; then followed the greyhounds in their cloths-that famous breed whose portraits are still to be seen-boat carriages, and equipages of every sort, together with, terriers, waterdogs, and spaniels, accompanied by innumerable serving-men, dogcarts, and baggage-waggons bringing up the rear. We might indeed supply a volume of picturesque scenes in which the gay Colonel with his green hat, and his partridge-coloured coat, was an actor at Harrowgate; but the above must suffice.

* In allusion to the old superstition, that sternucre sinistram was an unhappy (infaustum) omen, but sternuere dextram a happy (faustum) one.

THE LOST MANTLE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "HENRI QUATRE; OR, THE DAYS OF THE

LEAGUE."

"How fares the night, Messires?" exclaimed Gaston of Orleans, brother of the Thirteenth Louis. The Duke, on starting from a reverie, looked around on his companions-a worthy group,-gentlemen of the household-dependants waiting the chance of court favour, and meanwhile flattering the foibles and extravagant fancies of their chief.

The party was sitting in the choicest saloon of our host of the Jardin du Renard, a house of rather equivocal reputation, open to the bourgeoisie and the public, somewhat in the style of a modern tavern with tea-gardens, yet with the reserve of private rooms for the use of the noblesse; boasting an excellent cook also at their service-all the means and appliances to make comfortable and happy, in privacy, the gay youth who found the court of the melancholy Louis dull, triste, and unsocial.

At the Duke's question, the Count de Rochefort sprang to the window. He was scarcely two-and-twenty; a laughing, singing, chattering dare-devil, who took a share in Gaston's foolery in the absence of conspiracy, insurrection, or other moving incident fitted to make life's pulse beat ardently.

"Dark beyond our best hopes !" cried the youth with animation; "but cold, very cold, if I may judge by the quick time of feet

below."

"To the Pont Neuf!" cried the guests with one accord, courtierlike anticipating the wishes of his Royal Highness.

"To the Pont Neuf, gentlemen, with all heart," exclaimed the prince, rising.

Like a celebrated nobleman of the present century, the prince was much addicted to nocturnal adventures; his favourite penchant being an extravagant partiality for plucking off the cloaks and mantles of passengers on cold, raw nights, leaving the luckless victims, with bare shoulders, to the season's inclemency.

"Remember, Messires," continued Gaston, whilst the equerry, Alphonse de Voisin, adjusted the Duke's mantle, "my wager with the Prince of Condé is-ten thousand crowns, that we bring home, tonight, ten cloaks or mantles, captured without wounding the owners; that is, as our cousin expressed himself, without drawing the blood of the refractory."

"Your Highness may rely upon it, not a glimpse of bare steel shall enliven our dark watch," said De Rochefort: "but, with permission, shall we not first escort De Voisin to the Luxembourg, to wait on Madame and the lady Ippolita? That disconsolate face quite disheartens me and he will surely be trapped by the prévôt's guard."

"And yet, in spite of our equerry's rueful visage," rejoined Gaston, glancing at the young man, "I have a presentiment he will be the hero of the night,—but allons !"

The doors of the saloon were flung open, the Duke and his associates, followed more leisurely by De Voisin, rushed down the stair