The Goddess Fortune ever had an eye on her promising daughter--Gaming;
and endowed her with splendid residences, in the most conspicuous
streets, near the palaces of kings. They were magnificently designed and
elegantly furnished. Lamps, always burning at the portals, were a sign
and a perpetual invitation unto all to enter; and, like the gates of the
Inferno, they were ever open to daily and nightly visitants; but, unlike
the latter, they permitted _EXIT_ to all who entered--some exulting with
golden spoil,--others with their hands in empty pockets,--some led by
her half-witted son Duelling,--others escorted by her malignant monster
Suicide, and his mate, the demon Despair.

'Religion, morals, virtue, all give way, And conscience dies, the
prostitute of play. Eternity ne'er steals one thought between, Till
suicide completes the fatal scene.'

Such is the _ALLEGORY_;(2) and it may serve well enough to represent
the thing in accordance with the usages of civilized or modern life; but
Gaming is a _UNIVERSAL_ thing--the characteristic of the human biped all
the world over.

(2) It appeared originally, I think, in the Harleian Miscellany. I
have taken the liberty to re-touch it here and there, with the view to
improvement.

The determination of events by 'lot' was a practice frequently resorted
to by the Israelites; as, by lot it was determined which of the goats
should be offered by Aaron; by lot the land of Canaan was divided;
by lot Saul was marked out for the Hebrew kingdom; by lot Jonah was
discovered to be the cause of the storm. It was considered an appeal to
Heaven to determine the points, and was thought not to depend on blind
chance, or that imaginary being called Fortune, who,

'----With malicious joy,
Promotes, degrades, delights in strife,
And makes a _LOTTERY_ of life.'

The Hindoo Code--a promulgation of very high antiquity--denounces
gambling, which proves that there were desperate gamesters among the
Hindoos in the earliest times. Men gamed, too, it would appear, after
the example set them by the gods, who had gamesters among them. The
priests of Egypt assured Herodotus that one of their kings visited alive
the lower regions called infernal, and that he there joined a gaming
party, at which he both lost and won.(3) Plutarch tells a pretty
Egyptian story to the effect, that Mercury having fallen in love with
Rhea, or the Earth, and wishing to do her a favour, gambled with the