es of custom. The old, who sit still while the young
dance and sing, may be permitted to regret the once always accessible
cards, which, in their own young days, delighted the old of that
generation: and not the old only.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ There are many causes for the diminished
attraction of cards in evening society. Late dinners leave little
evening. The old time for cards was the interval between tea and supper.
Now there is no such interval, except here and there in out-of-the-way
places, where, perhaps, quadrille and supper may still flourish, as in
the days of Queen Anne. Nothing was more common in country towns and
villages, half-a-century ago, than parties meeting in succession at each
other's houses for tea, supper, and quadrille. How popular this game had
been, you may judge from Gay's ballad, which represents all classes as
absorbed in quadrille.{2} Then the facility of locomotion dissipates,
annihilates neighbourhood.

1 Boileau.

2 For example:

When patients lie in piteous case,
In comes the apothecary,
And to the doctor cries 'Alas!

_Non debes Quadrilare_.'
The patient dies without a pill:
For why? The doctor's at quadrille.

Should France and Spain again grow loud,
The Muscovite grow louder,
Britain, to curb her neighbours proud,

Would want both ball and powder;
Must want both sword and gun to kill;
For why? The general's at quadrille.

People are not now the fixtures they used to be in their respective
localities, finding their amusements within their own limited circle.
Half the inhabitants of a country place are here to-day and gone
to-morrow. Even of those who are more what they call settled, the
greater portion is less, probably, at home than whisking about the
world. Then, again, where cards are played at all, whist is more
consentaneous to modern solemnity: there is more wiseacre-ism about it:
in the same manner that this other sort of quadrille, in which people
walk to and from one another with faces of exemplary gravity, has taken
the place of the old-fashioned country-dance. 'The merry dance, I dearly
love' would never suggest the idea of a quadrille, any more than 'merry
England' would call up any image not drawn from ancient ballads and the
old English drama.

_Mr. Gryll._ Well, doctor, I intend to have a ball at Christmas, in
whi