immortalized by Mr
Samuel Foote, comedian, at which was present the great _Panjandrum_
himself, with the little round button at top, the festivities continuing
till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of the company's boots.

'When I was a boy, not so very long--say twenty years--since, the
West-end of London swarmed with illicit gambling houses, known by a name
I will not offend your ears by repeating.

On every race-course there was a public gambling booth and an abundance
of thimble-riggers' stalls. These, I am happy to state, exist no longer;
and the fools who are always ready to be plucked, can only, in gambling,
fall victims to the commonest and coarsest of swindlers; skittle sharps,
beer-house rogues and sharpers, and knaves who travel to entrap the
unwary in railway carriages with loaded dice, marked cards, and little
squares of green baize for tables, and against whom the authorities of
the railway companies very properly warn their passengers. A notorious
gambling house in St James's Street--Crockford's,--where it may be said,
without exaggeration, that millions of pounds sterling have been diced
away by the fools of fashion, is now one of the most sumptuous and
best conducted dining establishments in London--the "Wellington." The
semipatrician Hades that were to be found in the purlieus of St James's,
such as the "Cocoa Tree," the "Berkeley," and the "stick-shop," at
the corner of Albemarle Street--a whole Pandemonium of rosewood
and plate-glass dens--never recovered from a razzia made on them
simultaneously one night by the police, who were organized on a plan of
military tactics, and under the command of Inspector Beresford; and at
a concerted signal assailed the portals of the infamous places with
sledge-hammers. At the time to which I refer, in Paris, the Palais
Royal, and the environs of the Boulevards des Italiens, abounded with
magnificent gambling rooms similar to those still in existence in
Hombourg, which were regularly licensed by the police, and farmed under
the municipality of the Ville de Paris; a handsome per-centage of the
iniquitous profits being paid towards the charitable institutions of
the French metropolis. There are very many notabilities of the French
Imperial Court, who were then _fermiers des jeux_, or gambling house
contractors; and only a year or two since Doctor Louis Veron, ex-dealer
in quack medicines, ex-manager of the Grand Opera, and ex-proprietor
of the "Constitutionnel" new