on than the spirit of HIGH GAMING. There
being so little cognizance taken of the good qualities of the heart in
fashionable assemblies, no wonder that amid the medley of characters to
be found in these places the 'sharper' of polite address should gain too
easy an admission.

(4)

'How shalt THOU to Caesar's hall repair?
For, ah! no DAMAGED coat can enter there!'

BEATTIE'S Minstrel.

This fraternity of artists--whether they were to be denominated
rooks,(5) sharps, sharpers, black-legs, Greeks, or gripes--were
exceedingly numerous, and were dispersed among all ranks of society.

(5) So called because rooks are famous for stealing materials out of
other birds' nests to build their own.

The follies and vices of others--of open-hearted youth in
particular--were the great game or pursuit of this odious crew. Though
cool and dispassionate themselves, they did all in their power to throw
others off their guard, that they might make their advantage of them.

In others they promoted excess of all kinds, whilst they themselves took
care to maintain the utmost sobriety and temperance. 'Gamesters,' says
Falconer, 'whose minds must be always on the watch to take advantages,
and prepared to form calculations, and to employ the memory, constantly
avoid a full meal of animal food, which they find incapacitates them for
play nearly as much as a quantity of strong liquor would have done, for
which reason they feed chiefly on milk and vegetables.'

As profit, not pleasure, was the aim of these knights of darkness, they
lay concealed under all shapes and disguises, and followed up their game
with all wariness and discretion. Like wise traders, they made it the
business of their lives to excel in their calling.

For this end they studied the secret mysteries of their art by night
and by day; they improved on the scientific schemes of their profound
master, Hoyle, and on his deep doctrines and calculations of chances.
They became skilful without a rival where skill was necessary, and
fraudulent without conscience where fraud was safe and advantageous; and
while fortune or chance appeared to direct everything, they practised
numberless devices by which they insured her ultimate favours to
themselves.

Of these none were more efficacious, because none are more ensnaring,
than bribing their young and artless dupes to future play by suffering
them to win at their first onsets. By rising a winner the dupe imbibed a
con