10' A CLUB-ROOM. 



o' Sundays, and drank their port at dinner, without 

 once dreaming that they were behind the age, much 

 less that they were robbers, insomuch as they owned 

 goodly acres; or habitual drunkards, insomuch as 

 they preferred Bordeaux to milk and water, and old 

 October to the then unsung and unhonored Croton. 



It was in Melton Mowbray, then, on a dark, driz- 

 zling Saturday night, in the latter end of November, 

 1830, that we will take a peep into the interior of the 

 Melton Club-room. 



There ; it is, as you see, a large, substantially fur- 

 nished, well-lighted room ; prepared with especial 

 reference to comfort, but very little heed to show. 

 The carpets are of the softest, the arm-chairs of the 

 easiest, the grates are replenished with piles of Can- 

 nel coal, blazing as if they would outvie the hun- 

 dreds of wax candles ; the arm-chairs are filled, the 

 sofas occupied, the tables surrounded by the first 

 men in England ; the first in birth and breeding, as 

 in bearing and appearance — many the first in talent, 

 as in rank ; some with hard-earned and world-wide 

 reputation ; and yet, in the means and appliances for 

 their comfort, there is none of that ostentatious dis- 

 play of glass and gilding, of satin and velvet, of huhl 

 and marquetry, which is to be seen with us in the 

 town-house of every fifth-rate merchant prince, who 

 is to-day a millionaire, to-morrow a bankrupt and a 

 beggar ; nay ! even in the saloon of every transient 

 steamboat that plies, laden with emigrants and 

 traders, trappers, and miners, backwoodsmen and 

 blacklegs, over the glittering waters of our great 

 western lakes. 



A few fine pictures on the walls, by Lawrence or 

 Sir Joshua, by Stubbs and Cooper and Landseer, 

 portraits these of distinguished Nimrods of their day, 

 masters of packs, or followers of the Quorn, those of 

 theii' favorite companions and allies, the horses that 



