A CLUB-ROOM. 11 



lived to the end of the longest run, the hounds that 

 ran the fleetest and the truest ; but no mh-rors of plate- 

 glass, wherein Goliah might have viewed himself en- 

 tire, horsed on a charger up to his colossal frame ; no 

 cornices of carven gold ; no tables of invaluable por- 

 phyry, or consoles of Russian malachite. 



Two or three whist-tables are distinguished easily 

 enough, by the gravity and silence of their occupants ; 

 two or three more, merrier and more noisily sur- 

 rounded, where ecartd is in full blast — at one of the 

 first, that down-looking, light-haired, uneyebrowed 

 man, with a voice clear and soft as a silver-trumpet, 

 a voice whose pleadings, it is said, no woman ever 

 heard and resisted — you would pass him in a crowd 

 utterly unnoticed, yet he has broken more hearts and 

 ruined more reputations than any man in England — 

 that is Henry de R''''^*, untainted as yet by the infamy 

 which in after days tarnished the ermine of his baro- 

 nial robes, and known only as the best and luckiest 

 whist-player, the man most a bonnes fortunes of all 

 in, or out of London. 



Opposite him, that handsome, large-built man, with 

 the aquiline nose and well-opened eye, the most aris- 

 tocratic air and bearing, yet the openest and most 

 kindly manner, that is the Duke of Beaufort, the 

 dashing Worcester of past days, never to be forgotten 

 as the best-natured of the dandies. Two Georges fill 

 the party quarre, the handsome and elaborately got 

 up Anson, with his finely chiseled but somewhat un- 

 meaning features ; and his small, natty, well-dressed 

 vis-a-vis, the prince of sportsmen and goodfellows, the 

 deepest of betters, and most unmoved of losers, then 

 something new upon the turf, George Payne of Selby. 

 That slovenly, nay, almost dirty, person who has just 

 backed De R*** so heavily against Tom Gascoigne, 

 is the well known baronet Sir William Ingilby, so 

 well known for his naive replies, in after days, on the 



