MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 
-Of seeing company, has been pro- 
ductive of more domestic misery 
and more real distress, poverty, and 
wretchedness to families in this 
great metropolis (who but for their 
folly might have been easy and 
comfortable), than many volumes 
could detail. 
A mistaken sense of what con- 
stitutes human happiness, leads the 
mass of the people who have the 
means of moving, in any degree, 
above the middle ranks of life, into 
the fatal error of mingling in what 
is called genteel company, if that 
can be called such where Faro 
Tables and other games of hazard 
are introduced in private families. 
—Where the least recommendation 
(and sharpers spare no pains to ob- 
tain recommendations) admits all 
ranks who can exhibit a genteel 
exterior, and where the young and 
the inexperienced are initiated in 
every propensity tending to debase 
the human charaéter, and taught to 
view with contempt every acquire. 
ment connected with those duties 
which lead to domestic happiness, 
or to those objects of utility which 
can render either sex respectable in 
the world. 
To the horde of sharpers at pre- 
sent upon the town, these places of 
rendezvous furnish a most produc- 
tive harvest. 
, Many of this class, ruined per- 
haps themselves in early life in se- 
minaries of the same description, 
to which they foolishly resorted, 
when vanity predominated over 
[491 
prudence and discretion, have no 
alternative but to follow up the 
.same mischievous trade, and to 
prey upon the ignorant, the inex- 
perienced, and. the unwary, until 
they too see the fatal Selosion when 
it is too late. 
When such Sosa prac- 
tices are encouraged and san¢tioned 
by high-sounding names,—when 
sharpers and black-legs find an 
easy introduction into the houses 
of persons of fashion, who assem- 
ble in multitudes together for the 
purpose of playing at those most 
odious and detestable games of 
hazard, which the legislature has 
stigmatized with such marks of 
reprobation, it is time for the 
civil magistrate to step forward :— 
and.to feel, that in doing that duty 
which the laws of his country im- 
pose on him, he is perhaps saving 
hundreds of families from ruin and 
destruction, and preserving to the 
infants of thoughtless and deluded 
parents that property which is their 
birth-right : but which, for want 
of an energetic police in enforcing 
the laws made for the proteCtion. 
of this property, would otherwise 
have been lost, leaving nothing to 
console the mind but the sad re. 
flection, that with the loss of for- 
tune, those opportunities (in con. 
sequence of idle habits) were also 
lost of fitting the unfortunate suf. 
ferer for any reputable pursuit in 
life, by which an honest livelihood 
could be obtained, 
POETRY. 
