INCURABLE GAMESTERS.

The Salon des Etrangers in Paris was, after the Restoration, a rendezvous for confirmed gamblers. It was conducted by the Marquis de Livry; he presented an extraordinary likeness to the Prince Regent of England, "who," says Captain Gronow, "actually sent Lord Fife over to Paris to ascertain this momentous fact." The play in these saloons was frequently of the most reckless character. The Captain tells us that "The Hon. George T——, who used to arrive from London with a very considerable letter of credit expressly to try his luck at the Salon des Etrangers, at length contrived to lose his last shilling at rouge et noir. When he had lost everything he possessed in the world, he got up and exclaimed, in an excited manner, 'If I had Canova's Venus and Adonis from Alton Towers, my uncle's country-seat, it should be placed on the rouge, for black has won fourteen times running.'

But, perhaps, the most incurable gamester amongst the English was Lord Thanet, whose income was not less than 50,000l. a-year, every farthing of which he lost at play. When the gambling-tables were closed, he invited those who remained to play at chicken-hazard and ecarté; the consequence was that, one night, he left off a loser of 120,000%. When told of his folly and the probability of his having been cheated, he exclaimed, "Then I consider myself lucky in not having lost twice that sum."

Fox, the secretary of the Embassy, came nightly to the Salon; and if he possessed a Napoleon, it was sure to be thrown away at hazard, or rouge et noir. The late Henry Baring, however, one night recommended him to take to the dice-box. Fox replied, "I will do so for the last time, for all my money is thrown away upon this infernal table." Fox staked all he had in his pockets; he threw in eleven times, breaking the bank, and taking home for his share, 60,000 francs.

Marshal Blucher was another daily visitor, and played the highest stakes at rouge et noir: it is said that the Bank of France was called upon to furnish him with several thousand pounds, to reimburse him for the money lost at play.

THE ABSENT HUSBAND RETURNED.

London is the only place in all Europe where a man can find a secure retreat, or remain, if he pleases, many years unknown. If he pays constantly for his lodging, for his provisions, and for whatsoever else he wants, nobody will ask a question concerning him, or inquire whence he comes, whither he goes, &c. Dr. King relates the following evidence of this fact, in his pleasant volume of Anecdotes of his Own Time, published in 1819:

"About the year 1706 (says the Doctor), I knew one Mr. Howe, a sensible, well-natured man, possessed of an estate of 7007. or 8007. per annum : he married a young lady of good family in the west of England, her maiden name was Mallet;' she was agreeable in her person and manners, and proved a very good wife. Seven or eight years after they had been married, he rose one morning early, and told his wife he was obliged to go to the Tower to transact some particular business: the same day, at noon, his wife received a note from him, in which he informed her that he was under a necessity of going to Holland, and should probably be about three weeks or a month. He was absent from her seventeen years, during which time she neither heard from him, nor of him. The evening before he returned, whilst she was at supper, and with some of her friends and relations, particularly one Dr. Rose, a physician, who had married her sister, a billet, without any name subscribed, was delivered to her, in which the writer requested the favour of her to give him a meeting the next evening, in the Birdcage-walk, in St. James'spark. When she had read her billet, she tossed it to Dr. Rose, and laughing, 'You see, brother,' said she, 'old as I am, I have got a gallant.' Rose, who perused the note with more attention, declared it to be Mr. Howe's handwriting; this surprised all the company, and so much affected Mrs. Howe, that she fainted away; however, she soon recovered, when it was agreed that Dr. Rose and his wife, with the other gentlemen and ladies who were then at supper, should attend Mrs. Howe the next evening to the Birdcage-walk. They had not been there more than five or six minutes, when Mr. Howe came to them, and after saluting his friends, and embracing his wife, walked home with her, and they lived

together in great harmony from that time to the day of his death.

"But the most curious part of my tale remains to be related. When Howe left his wife, they lived in a house in Jermynstreet, near St. James's Church; he went no further than to a little street in Westminster, where he took a room, for which he paid five or six shillings a week, and changing his name, and disguising himself by wearing a black wig (for he was a fair man), he remained in this habitation during the whole time of his absence. He had had two children by his wife when he departed from her; but they both died young in a few years after. However, during their lives, the second or third year after their father disappeared, Mrs. Howe was obliged to apply for an Act of Parliament to procure a proper settlement of her husband's estate, and a provision for herself out of it during his absence, as it was uncertain whether he was alive or dead: this Act he suffered to be solicited and passed, and enjoyed the pleasure of reading the progress of it in the votes, in a little coffee-house near his lodging, which he frequented. Upon his quitting his house and family in the manner I have mentioned, Mrs. Howe at first imagined, as she could not conceive any other cause for such an abrupt elopement, that he had contracted a large debt unknown to her, and by that means involved himself in difficulties, which he could not easily surmount; and for some days she lived in continual apprehensions of demands from creditors, of seizures, executions, &c. But nothing of this kind happened.

"Mrs. Howe, after the death of her children, thought proper to lessen her family of servants, and the expenses of her housekeeping; and, therefore, removed from her house in Jermyn-street to a little house in Brewer-street, near Golden-square. Just over against her lived one Salt, a cornchandler. About ten years after Howe's abdication, he contrived to make an acquaintance with Salt, and was at length in such a degree of intimacy with him, that he usually dined with Salt once or twice a week. From the room in which they eat, it was not difficult to look into Mrs. Howe's diningroom, where she generally sate and received company; and Salt, who believed Howe to be a bachelor, frequently recommended his owh wife to him as a suitable match. During the last seven years of this gentleman's absence, he went every Sunday to St. James's Church, and used to sit in

Mr. Salt's seat, where he had a view of his wife, but could not easily be seen by her. After he returned home, he never would confess, even to his most intimate friends, what was the real cause of such singular conduct; apparently there was none: but whatever it was, he was certainly ashamed to own it. Dr. Rose has often said to me, that he believed his brother Howe would never have returned to his wife, if the money which he took with him, which was supposed to have been 1,000l. or 2,000l., had not been all spent; and he must have been a good economist, and frugal in his manner of living, otherwise his money would scarce have held out; for I imagine he had his whole fortune by him, I mean what he carried away with him in money or bank-bills, and daily took out of his bag, like the Spaniard in Gil Blas, what was sufficient for his expenses."

Dr. King received this remarkable story from Dr. Rose and Mr. Salt, whom he often met at King's coffee-house, near Golden-square.

SCOTTISH HUMOUR.

Sydney Smith very unfairly said it required a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotch understanding. "The only idea of wit," he said, "which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of 'wut,' is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals." He might have drawn a distinction between English wit and Scotch humour in no way discreditable to the latter. Charles Lamb is a second witness in the same cause to prove an alibi as regards wit proper. Dean Ramsay, however, controverts this with some show of success, though most of the peculiar zest which he ascribes to Scottish humour resolves itself into "the vehicle in which the humour is conveyed."

There is something distinctive in the following, but it is neither wit nor humour, but a shower of Scotch vocables. When an Aberdonian went up to visit his son, then the manager of the Opera-house, his answer on his return as to the nature of his son's business was this, "He just keeps a curn of wirricows and weanies, and gars them fizzle and loup and mak murgeons to the great foulk." Though this may not sustain the pretensions to peculiar humour, it will go far to sustain the claim to a distinctive language.

A Scotch nobleman, of no bright parts, was asked by the Duchess of Devonshire how it happened that the Scots in general made a much better figure from home than in Scotland. "Oh !" said he, "nothing is so easily accounted for. For the honour of the nation persons are stationed at every egress, to see that none leave the country but men of abilities." "Then," answered the Duchess, "I suspect your lordship was smuggled."

A poor laird of Macnab was in the habit of riding a most wretched horse to the Musselburgh races, where a young wit asked him, in a contemptuous tone, "Is that the same horse you had last year, laird ?" "Na," said the laird, brandishing his whip in the interrogator's face, so emphatically as to preclude further questioning, "Na; but it's the same whip."

A miserly Scottish lord had picked up a small copper coin, and was observed to put it into his pocket by a beggar, who exclaimed, "O, gie't to me, my lord;" to which the quiet answer was, "Na, na; fin' a fardin for yersell, puir body."

The late Lord Airlie remarking to one of his tenants that it was a very wet season, "Indeed, my lord," replied the man, "I think the spiggot's out a' thegither."

PALMER'S CLARET.

*

The

Captain Gronow relates that General Palmer having received from Parliament 100,000l. for his father's introduction of the mail-coach system, was induced to invest a large portion of his fortune in the purchase of a fine estate for the production of claret, in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux. management of the property he confided to a very plausible agent, under whose auspices Palmer's Claret began to be talked of in the clubs, and to be highly prized. The patronage of the Regent was solicited, and the Prince, from a kindly feeling for Palmer, who had before been introduced at Carlton House, gave a dinner, when his claret was to be tried. Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, Sir William Knighton, and Sir Thomas Tyrrwhitt were of the party, with Lord Yarmouth, known as "Red-herrings," from his rubicund whiskers, hair, and face, and from the town of Yarmouth largely importing that fish from Holland. The wine was produced, and was found

* In his lively volume of Reminiscences, &c.