d in monosyllables, and a certain haw-haw dreariness pervades
all intercourse, to say that people are above Whist. Why, they are below
Push-pin!

It would be sufficient to point to the age when Whist was most in vogue,
to show that it flavoured a society second to none in agreeability; and
who were the players? The most eminent divines, the greatest ministers,
the most profound jurists, the most subtle diplomatists. What an
influence a game so abounding in intellectual teaching must have
exercised on the society where it prevailed, can scarcely be computed.
Blackstone has a very remarkable passage on the great social effect
produced upon the Romans by their popular games; and he goes so far as
to say that society imbibes a vast amount of those conventionalities
which form its laws, from an Tin-conscious imitation of the rules which
govern its pastimes. Take our own time, and I ask with confidence,
should we find such want of purpose as our public men exhibit, such
uncertainty, such feebleness, and such defective allegiance to party,
in a whist-playing age? Would men be so ready as we see them to renounce
their principles, if they bore fresh in their mind all the obloquy that
follows "a revoke"? Would they misquote their statistics in face of the
shame that attends on "a false score"? Would they be so ready to assert
what they know they must retract, if they had a recent recollection of
being called on "to take down the honours"?

Think, then, of the varied lessons--moral as well as mental--that the
game instils; the caution, the reserve, the patient attention, the
memory, the deep calculation of probabilities, embracing all the rules
of evidence, the calm self-reliance, and the vigorous daring that shows
when what seems even rashness may be the safest of all expedients.
Imagine the daily practice of these gifts and faculties, and tell me,
if you can, that he who exercises them can cease to employ them in his
everyday life. You might as well assert that the practice of gymnastics
neither develops the muscle nor increases strength.

I cannot believe a great public man to have attained a fall development
of his power if he has not been a whist-player; and for a leader of the
House, it is an absolute necessity. Take a glance for a moment at what
goes on in Parliament in this non-whist age, and mark the consequences.
Look in at an ordinary sitting of the House, and see how damaging to his
party that unhappy man is, who _wi