rest of the kingdom." Nor was the amazement of that other veracious chronicler of contemporary fashionable folly less great than that of Evelyn. "This evening," wrote he in his "Diary," under date of February 17, 1667, "going to the queen's side (in the palace at Whitehall) to see the ladies, I did find the Queene, the Duchesse of York, and another or two, at cards, with the room full of great ladies and men; which I was amazed at to see on a Sunday, having not believed it; but, contrarily, flatly denied the same a little time since to my cosen Roger Pepys." 2 Much as Pepys had seen and heard of Court life under the sway of his royal master, this came upon him as a revelation. The truth was that all the members of the royal family preferred the fashionable games at cards on the seventh day to the society and conversation of Court chaplains and divines eminent for their talents or for their oratorical powers. Moreover, the Princess Mary, after she had been united in the bonds of wedlock to the Prince of Orange, introduced the practice into Holland, and in so doing scandalised in no small degree a people whose ecclesiastical polity and practice had been founded on the gloomy system of John Calvin, the great French teacher of Geneva. 3

We may with great reason conclude that the predilection which women displayed in the Caroline age for gambling must have been very great indeed when it was rebuked publicly on the stage in the prologues and epilogues to plays, the sole portions of dramatic compositions in which playwrights endeavoured to correct that which was amiss in the public morality. Most of our readers who possess any acquaintance with the dramatic writings of the George Sand of the Restoration, Mrs. Afra Behn-a lady, who through her marriage with a Dutch merchant of the City of London, gained an entrance to the Court of Charles II., whom she was wont to amuse with her witty sallies and eloquent descriptions-will bear us out when we say that it is impossible, from what is known of her career, to admit her claim to be considered as a censor of fashionable manners and morals. Yet in the prologue to her tragedy of "The Moor's Revenge," Mrs. Behn bids the young ladies of the period to beware of keeping unreasonable hours at gambling if they desired to preserve their complexions: Yet sitting up so late, as I am told,

You'll lose in beauty what you gain in gold.

The celebrated dramatist, Sir George Etherege, again, whose life 'Diary, ed. Braybrooke, 1850, i. p. 359.

Ibid. iii. pp. 406-10.

* See in proof of this assertion the Diary of Dr. Edward Lake, published by the Camden Society.

scandalised many even in that age, and whose affection for the fair sex knew scarcely any bounds, was equally angry with the ladies for the decided partiality which they manifested for cards and dice. In a song of his on the game called basset, he remonstrated with them on the subject, saying, among other things:

The time which should be kindly lent

To plays and witty men,

In waiting for a knave is spent,

Or wishing for a ten.

Stand in defence of your own charms,

Throw down this favorite

That threatens, with his dazzling arms,
Your beauty and your wit.

What pity 'tis, those conquering eyes,
Which all the world subdue,

Should, while the lover gazing dies,

Be only on Alpue.

To render certain allusions in the foregoing verses comprehensible to some of our readers, we must explain that in the game known as basset, which is now seldom or never played, "waiting for a knave," or "wishing for a ten," implied the anxiety which was attendant upon the turning-up of the winning cards, and that the last word of this last line of the third verse, "alpue," was a term which was applied to the continuation of the bet on a particular card which had previously won. Inability to gamble and to play cards constituted an insuperable hindrance to introduction into polite society. "Gaming," wrote the author of a treatise on the games played "at Court and in the assemblies," written, as the title-page sets forth, for the use of the young princesses to whom it was dedicated, "is become so much the fashion among the beau monde that he who in company should appear ignorant of the games in vogue would be reckoned low-bred and hardly fit for conversation." These words occur in a publication bearing the suggestive title of "The Compleat Gamester; or, Full and Easy Instructions for Playing the Games now in Vogue, &c. By Richard Seymour, Esq." This treatise was originally published in the year 1674, and subsequently passed through several editions, each of which was enlarged by the introduction of ample descriptions of later games, such as ombre, picquet, and chess. Roger North, in that instructive and entertaining sketch which he has left on record of the life of his brother Francis, Lord Guilford, is careful to mention that he attained considerable proficiency in all games of cards, dice, and billiards,' presumably in order to remove any misapprehension in the mind of the reader

1 North's Life of Lord Guilford, i. p. 17.

that he took no interest in the most fashionable forms of amusement

in that age.

About eight years after the Restoration the gambling mania for time gave place to one for masquerading. The rage, of course, began in the Court, but soon infected the whole town. "At this time," says Bishop Burnet, under date of 1668, "the Court fell into much extravagance in masquerading; both the King and Queen , and all the Court went about masked, and came into houses unknown, and danced there with a good deal of wild frolick. In all this, people were so disguised, that without being in the secret none could distinguish them. They were carried about in hackney chairs. Once the Queen's chairmen, not knowing who she was, went from her. So she was alone, and was much disturbed, and came to Whitehall in a hackney coach. Some say in a cart." It has been remarked, and we think with much truth, that whenever masquerades in public or private constitute a popular amusement with the pleasure-loving public, including both the Court and the aristocracy, it is a very bad sign of national morals.

The midnight orgy and the mazy dance,

The smile of beauty and the flush of wine,

For fops, fools, gamesters, knaves and lords combine;

Each to his humour-Comus all allows.

Certain periods of

Here for the present we must conclude. history are often surrounded with a halo of glory. Dazzling associations cluster round names. It is distance which lends enchantment to the view. Living witnesses who have known both the past and the present generations, will, by a law of human nature, always award the palm of superiority to the companions of their youth. Yet, unless we greatly deceive ourselves, it will require very strong arguments to convince thoughtful persons that the social powers of any class of English society have fallen off, while morality, taste, knowledge, genera freedom of intercourse and liberality of opinion have been steadily advancing; that the comparison between the manners and morals of the seventeenth century and our own is not highly satisfactory; that intellectual tastes have not superseded the necessity which was then felt by the upper class of resorting to coarse indulgences and strong excitements; or that respect for public opinion does not compel those among them who continue unregenerate to conceal their transgressions from the eyes of the world.

WILLIAM CONNOR SYDNEY.

'Burnet's History of My Own Times, i. p. 368.

NATURALIST AND BIOLOGIST: A COMPARISON.

IN

N these days there are two schools of naturalists, the New and the Old; but the members of the Old are fading away, while those of the New are stepping with but little reverence for past occupants into the places they have filled so sweetly and so long.

It is close upon a century since the most celebrated of all the older school dropped silently out of the daily life of the villagers of Selborne; and the simple eulogy spoken of Gilbert White by a surviving fellow-parishioner--" He was a still, quiet body, and there wasn't a bit of harm in him, there wasn't indeed "-would be equally appropriate to the great majority of his lesser brethren.

Now, too, the cobbler's stool where Thomas Edward was wont to work-his "friend of fifty years' standing," as he calls it, has been empty for awhile; in the Scotch shoemaker the old school of naturalists lost a striking and touching example.

And last, greater, more pathetic than them all, the vanished figure of Richard Jefferies lingers yet in our memory apart he held a unique position, he has left a unique void; the prophet of the woods and fields has left us, and, alas! there was no one to catch his mantle as it fell.

Here then are three great examples of the old school; and if amongst their many lesser brethren, if even amongst these three themselves certain differences of disposition and method appear, it in no way tends to upset the following generalisation, which makes. no pretence to be anything more.

Whatever individual peculiarities each may possess, they meet sufficiently often on common ground to be constituted, without forcing similitudes, into a class by themselves: a certain attitude of mind and a certain department of investigation at the same time connect them together and sever them from the members of the newer school, whom we may term Biologists. Characteristic of the Naturalists, then, as opposed to the Biologists, is their habit of minute observation of the ways of created things; they were content

to sit for hours beneath a hedge, or half hidden behind a tree, for the chance, however remote, of seeing something of the animal world. that they had never seen before; indeed, though something new might have caused them more excitement, it could hardly have caused them more delight than that which was already familiar; for that which they found entrancing, entranced them always-it was a joy for ever.

This was the natural outcome of the attitude of their minds, and of the motives that led them to observation at all. They attached no especial significance to the actions of the animal they observed; they sought to build no theory upon them; no ambitious speculations as to the meaning of them exercised their minds. But they thought it a beautiful thing to see a wild creature freely following its natural habits, and were filled with delight when they could come upon an animal so quietly that it remained unconscious of their scrutiny. Still as a stone they would stand, though their limbs might ache from constrained positions, or a biting wind chill them to the bone, or the summer flies torment them past the limits of any but an enthusiast's endurance. They would stand immovable, selfconstituted martyrs, absorbed in the little drama before them, all forgotten or unregarded in the excitement that thrilled them; an excitement that, if it were not very scientific, was at least very innocent, and in these days begins to seem not a little touching. For that spirit is on the wane. The Naturalist, who watched the ways of a bird, has given place to the Biologist, who studies its inside; but whether this is such an advantageous change as the latter complacently conceives it to be, is a question still open to debate.

Here is a passage from the Natural History of Selborne; it exemplifies the spirit of the Naturalist :

"I have no reason to doubt," says old Gilbert White, in his simple style, exercising his mind as to the means of support of our English birds in winter, "but that the soft-billed birds which winter with us subsist chiefly upon insects. Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings; and in mild weather they procure worms which are stirring every month of the year, as anyone may see who will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass plot on any mild winter's night."

That is the spirit of the true Naturalist, for whom no details are too homely, no facts that he can learn too trifling to be of interest. One can almost see this refreshing old gentleman, wrapped in his