would probably find it not easy to persuade himself, that "a trifle light as air," is all that occupies and amuses the interesting group which he beholds, where all is gravity, attention, and silence, scarcely relieved by a single sally of wit, a smile of gaiety, or a glance of kindred and tender thought;-where the fascinations of taste, of grace, and of beauty, cease to be felt ;—where fair brows are shaded by sombre thought, and bright eyes are chilled by cold abstraction, and where all that is beautiful, and lovely, and gay, is bound, as by the spell of some unholy enchantment, in sadness and silence, in coldness and lifelessness.

The blood the virgin's cheek forsook,

A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look;
She sees, and trembles at the approaching ill,
Just in the jaws of ruin and Codille.*

What, then, is the attendant circum

stance, which gives to the amusement its

familiar, and pleasant? General conversation, under the restrictions which good manners must necessarily impose, cannot be long sustained with convenience and interest. To meet the circumstances of all, and to be generally interesting, the topics of conversation must be extremely limited and barren. The stores of a wellfurnished mind cannot be produced without manifest disadvantage; for this would destroy that mental equality which it is of the first importance to preserve. Conversation, if it is at all familiar and unrestrained, throws open the stores of the mind, elicits its powers, stimulates its efforts, and exhibits the degree of its culture and talents. The equality of metnal circumstance, which in appearance at least should be preserved in the social circle, would thereby be destroyed. All the care, which the most delicate sense of propriety could exert, would be insufficient to preserve a seeming level; invidious distinctions would be produced, and rendered obvious. In proportion to the freedom

and vivacity of conversation, the powers of thought, the stores of knowledge, the ebullitions of wit, and the creations of fancy, would be produced, and unavoidably brought into relationships of rivalry.

With a view to this inconvenience, cards have been introduced; and it must be admitted that, to a considerable extent, they accomplish their object. They afford an amusement of which, on equal terms, all can partake. The interesting and the insipid, the gay and the dull, the beautiful and the unattractive, merge their respective distinctions in the feelings of interest, which the amusement in common inspires. There is a provoking mixture of truth and satire in the remarks of Dr. Johnson on

this subject. "I cannot but suspect," says he, "that this odious fashion is produced by a conspiracy of the old, the ugly, and the ignorant, against the young and beautiful, the witty and the gay; as a contrivance to level all distinctions of nature and of art, and to confound the

world in a chaos of folly; to take from those who could outshine them, all the advantages of mind and body; to withhold youth from its natural pleasures, deprive wit of its influence, and beauty of its charms; to fix those hearts upon money, to which love has hitherto been entitled ; to sink life into a tedious uniformity, and to allow it no other hopes or fears but those of robbing and of being robbed."*

The apology which is offered is plausible, but by no means sufficient. It furnishes adequate reason why card-playing should be tolerated, and why it should frequently invite the attention of the social circle; it must be evident, however, even to the most superficial observer, that stronger motives than these reasons are able to supply, lead to the amusement. It is sought with avidity, and produces strong excitement. It is the first, and not the last resource of gratification. To it its

** The Rambler, No. 15.

votaries are not driven by necessity, but they are led by inclination. It has a power to fix the attention, and to interest the feelings, beyond almost every other amusement. An almost magical charm attends it, and how protracted soever, it never wearies. It often painfully and injuriously agitates indeed, but it never produces ennui. In short, ingenuity has never invented an amusement so completely absorbing, or that serves more effectually (employing a common phrase) "to kill time." The accurate inquirer, therefore, must search for something more in this amusement than has yet been stated, to account satisfactorily for the remarkable phenomena which it exhibits.

The field they afford for contest appears to be the secret of the interest which games in general create. Contest is a pleasure, rendered so by an instinct of the human mind, namely, the love of power. "The joys of conquest are the joys of man." Triumph is a point of ambition,