er--the gambling of savages--the gambling of the ancient Persians,
Greeks, and Romans--the gambling of the gorgeous monarchs of France
and their impassioned subjects; but I have now to introduce upon the
horrible stage a Prince Royal, who surpassed all his predecessors in
the gaming art, having right royally lost at play not much less than
a million sterling, or, as stated, L800,000--before he was twenty-one
years of age!

If the following be facts, vouched for by a writer of authority,(24) the
results were most atrocious.

(24) James Grant (Editor of the Morning Advertiser), Sketches in London.

'Every one is aware that George IV., when Prince of Wales, was, as the
common phrase is, over-head-and-ears in debt; and that it was because
he would thereby be enabled to meet the claims of his creditors, that he
consented to marry the Princess Caroline of Brunswick. But although this
is known to every one, comparatively few people are acquainted with the
circumstances under which his debts were contracted. Those debts, then,
were the result of losses at the gaming table. He was an inveterate
gambler--a habit which he most probably contracted through his intimacy
with Fox. It is a well-ascertained fact that in two short years, after
he attained his majority, he lost L800,000 at play.

'It was with the view and in the hope that marriage would cure his
propensity for the gaming table, that his father was so anxious to see
him united to Caroline; and it was solely on account of his marriage
with that princess constituting the only condition of his debts being
paid by the country, that he agreed to lead her to the hymeneal altar.

'The unfortunate results of this union are but too well known, not only
as regarded the parties themselves, but as regarded society generally.
To the gambling habits, then, of the Prince of Wales are to be ascribed
all the unhappiness which he entailed on the unfortunate Caroline,
and the vast amount of injury which the separation from her, and the
subsequent trial, produced on the morals of the nation generally.'

CHAPTER V. ODDITIES AND WITTICISMS OF GAMBLERS.

OSTENTATIOUS GAMESTERS.

Certain grandees and wealthy persons, more through vanity or weakness
than generosity, have sacrificed their avidity to ostentation--some
by renouncing their winnings, others by purposely losing. The greater
number of such eccentrics, however, seem to have allowed themselves to
be pillaged merely because th