. A portly person who announces himself as one of a company of
gamblers who have invested an enormous capital on a theory of winning by
means of low stakes and a certain combination excites universal
interest. Most of the talkers describe themselves frankly as men of
business. No doubt at Monaco, as elsewhere, there is the usual
aristocratic fringe--the Russian prince who flings away an estate at a
sitting, the half-blind countess from the Faubourg St. Germain, the
Polish dancer with a score of titles, the English "milord." But the bulk
of the players have the look and air of people who have made their money
in trade. It is well to look on at such a scene, if only to strip off
the romance which has been so profusely showered over it. As a matter of
fact nothing is more prosaic, nothing meaner in tone, nothing more
utterly devoid of interest, than a gambling-table. But as a question of
profit the establishment of M. Blanc throws into the shade the older
piracy of Monaco. The Venetian galleons, the carracks of Genoa, the
galleys of Marseilles, brought infinitely less gold to its harbour than
these two little groups of the fools of half a continent.

SKETCHES IN SUNSHINE.

IV.

THE WINTER RETREAT.

It is odd, when one is safely anchored in a winter refuge to look back
at the terrors and reluctance with which one first faced the sentence of
exile. Even if sunshine were the only gain of a winter flitting, it
would still be hard to estimate the gain. The cold winds, the icy
showers, the fogs we leave behind us, give perhaps a zest not wholly its
own to Italian sunshine. But the abrupt plunge into a land of warmth and
colour sends a strange shock of pleasure through every nerve. The
flinging off of wraps and furs, the discarding of greatcoats, is like
the beginning of a new life. It is not till we pass in this sharp,
abrupt fashion from the November of one side the Alps to the November of
the other that we get some notion of the way in which the actual range
and freedom of life is cramped by the "chill north-easters" in which
Mr. Kingsley revelled. The unchanged vegetation, the background of dark
olive woods, the masses of ilex, the golden globes of the orange hanging
over the garden wall, are all so many distinct gains to an eye which has
associated winter with leafless boughs and a bare landscape. One has
almost a boyish delight in plucking roses at Christmas or hunting for
violets along the hedges on New Y