What a calm and pleasant seclusion the library presents after the bawl and bustle of the newspaper-room! There is never anybody here. English gentlemen get up such a prodigious quantity of knowledge in their early life, that they leave off reading soon after they begin to shave, or never look at anything but a newspaper. How pleasant this room is, isn't it? with its sober draperies, and long calm lines of peaceful volumes - nothing to interrupt the quiet-only the melody of Horner's nose as he lies asleep upon one of the sofas. What is he reading? Hah! "Pendennis," No. VII. -hum, let us pass on. Have you read "David Copperfield," by the way? How beautiful it is how charmingly fresh and simple! In those admirable touches of tender humor- - and I should call humor, Bob, a mixture of love and wit who can equal this great genius? There are little words and phrases in his books which are like personal benefits to the reader. What a place it is to hold in the affections of men! What an awful responsibility hanging over a writer! What man holding such a place, and knowing that his words go forth to vast congregations of mankind, — to grown folks to their children, and perhaps to their children's children, -but must think of his calling with a solemn and humble heart! May love and truth guide such a man always! It is an awful prayer; may heaven further its fulfilment. And then, Bob, let the Record revile him-See, here's Horner waking up How do you do, Horner?

This neighboring room, which is almost as quiet as the library, is the card-room, you see. There are always three or four devotees assembled in it; and the lamps are scarcely ever out in this Temple of Trumps.

I admire, as I see them, my dear Bobby, grave and silent at these little green tables, not moved outwardly by grief or pleasure at losing or winning, but calmly pursuing their game (as that pursuit is called, which is in fact the most elaborate science and study) at noonday, entirely absorbed, and philosophically indifferent to the bustle and turmoil of the enormous working world without. Disraeli may make his best speech; the Hungarians may march into Vienna; the Protectionists come in; Louis Philippe be restored; or the Thames set on fire; and Colonel Pam and Mr. Trumpington will never leave. their table, so engaging is their occupation at it. The turning up of an ace is of more interest to them than all the affairs of all the world besides and so they will go on until Death summons them, and their last trump is played.

It is curious to think that a century ago almost all gentle

men, soldiers, statesmen, men of science, and divines, passed hours at play every day; as our grandmothers did likewise. The poor old kings and queens must feel the desertion now, and deplore the present small number of their worshippers, as compared to the myriads of faithful subjects who served them in past times.

I do not say that other folks' pursuits are much more or less futile; but fancy a life such as that of the Colonel eight or nine hours of sleep, eight of trumps, and the rest for business, reading, exercise, and domestic duty or affection (to be sure he's most likely a bachelor, so that the latter offices do not occupy him much) fancy such a life, and at its conclusion at the age of seventy-five, the worthy gentleman being able to say, I have spent twenty-five years of my existence turning up trumps.

Whist is a pro

With Trumpington matters are different. fession with him, just as much as Law is yours. He makes the deepest study of it - he makes every sacrifice to his pursuit: he may be fond of wine and company, but he eschews both, to keep his head cool and play his rubber. He is a man of good parts, and was once well read, as you see by his conversation when he is away from the table, but he gives up reading for play and knows that to play well a man must play every day. He makes three or four hundred a year by his Whist, and well he may with his brains, and half his industry, he could make a larger income at any other profession.

In a game with these two gentlemen, the one who has been actually seated at that card-table for a term as long as your whole life, the other who is known as a consummate practitioner, do you think it is likely you will come off a winner? The state of your fortune is your look-out, not theirs. They are there at their posts like knights ready to meet all comers. If you choose to engage them, sit down. They will, with the most perfect probity, calmness, and elegance of manner, win and win of you until they have won every shilling of a fortune, when they will make you a bow, and wish you good morning. You may go and drown yourself afterwards — it is not their business. Their business is to be present in that room, and to play cards with you or anybody. When you are done with - Bon jour. My dear Colonel, let me introduce you to a new member, my nephew, Mr. Robert Brown.

The other two men at the table are the Honorable G. Windgall and Mr. Chanter: perhaps you have not heard that the one made rather a queer settlement at the last Derby; and the

other has just issued from one of her Majesty's establishments in St. George's Fields.

Either of these gentlemen is perfectly affable, good-natured, and easy of access—and will cut you for half-crowns if you like, or play you at any game on the cards. They descend from their broughams or from horseback at the Club door with the most splendid air, and they feast upon the best dishes and wines in the place.

But do you think it advisable to play cards with them? Which know the games best -you or they? Which are most likely we will not say to play foul but to take certain little advantages in the game which their consummate experience teaches them you or they? Finally, is it a matter of perfect certainty, if you won, that they would pay you?

Let us leave these gentlemen, my dear Bob, and go through the rest of the house.

From the library we proceed to the carved and gilded drawing-room of the Club, the damask hangings of which are embroidered with our lovely emblem, the Polyanthus, and which is fitted with a perfectly unintelligible splendor. Sardanapalus, if he had pawned one of his kingdoms, could not have had such mirrors as one of those in which I see my dear Bob admiring the tie of his cravat with such complacency, and I am sure I cannot comprehend why Smith and Brown should have their persons reflected in such vast sheets of quicksilver; or why, if we have a mind to a sixpenny cup of tea and muffins, when we come in with muddy boots from a dirty walk, those refreshments should be served to us as we occupy a sofa much more splendid, and far better stuffed, than any Louis Quatorze ever sat upon. I want a sofa, as I want a friend, upon which I can repose familiarly. If you can't have intimate terms and freedom with one and the other, they are of no good. A full-dress Club is an absurdity and no man ought to come into this room except in a uniform or court suit. I daren't put my feet on yonder sofa for fear of sullying the damask, or, worse still, for fear that Hicks the Committee-man should pass, and spy out my sacrilegious boots on the cushion.

We pass through these double-doors, and enter rooms of a very different character.

By the faint and sickly odor pervading this apartment, by the opened windows, by the circular stains upon the marble tables, which indicate the presence of brandies-and-waters long passed into the world of spirits, my dear Bob will have no diffi

culty in recognizing the smoking-room, where I dare say he will pass a good deal of his valuable time henceforth.

If I could recommend a sure way of advancement and profit to a young man about town, it would be, after he has come away from a friend's house and dinner, where he has to a surety had more than enough of claret and good things, when he ought to be going to bed at midnight, so that he might rise fresh and early for his morning's work, to stop, nevertheless, for a couple of hours at the Club, and smoke in this room and tipple weak brandy-and-water.

By a perseverance in this system, you may get a number of advantages. By sitting up till three of a summer morning, you have the advantage of seeing the sun rise, and as you walk home to Pump Court, can mark the quiet of the streets in the rosy glimmer of the dawn. You can easily spend in that smoking-room, (as for the billiard-room adjacent, how much more can't you get rid of there,) and without any inconvenience or extravagance whatever, enough money to keep you a horse. Three or four cigars when you are in the Club, your case filled when you are going away, a couple of glasses of very weak cognac and cold water, will cost you sixty pounds a year, as sure as your name is Bob Brown. And as for the smoking and tippling, plus billiards, they may be made to cost anything.

And then you have the advantage of hearing such delightful and instructive conversation in a Club smoking-room, between the hours of twelve and three! Men who frequent that place at that hour are commonly men of studious habits and philosophical and reflective minds, to whose opinions it is pleasant and profitable to listen. They are full of anecdotes, which are always moral and well chosen; their talk is never free, or on light subjects. I have one or two old smoking-room pillars in my eye now, who would be perfect models for any young gentleman entering life, and to whom a father could not do better than intrust the education of his son.

To drop the satirical vein, my dear Bob, I am compelled as a man to say my opinion, that the best thing you can do with regard to that smoking-room is to keep out of it; or at any rate never to be seen in the place after midnight. They are very pleasant and frank, those jolly fellows, those loose fishes, those fast young men but the race in life is not to such fast young men as these and you who want to win must get up early of a morning, my boy. You and an old college-chum or two may sit together over your cigar-boxes in one another's chambers,

-

no

and talk till all hours, and do yourselves good probably. Talking among you is a wholesome exercitation; humor comes in an easy flow; it doesn't preclude grave argument and manly interchange of thought I own myself, when I was younger, to have smoked many a pipe with advantage in the company of Doctor Parr. Honest men, with pipes or cigars in their mouths, have great physical advantages in conversation. You may stop talking if you like — but the breaks of silence never seem disagreeable, being filled up by the puffing of the smoke hence there is no awkwardness in resuming the conversation straining for effect - sentiments are delivered in a grave easy manner the cigar harmonizes the society, and soothes at once the speaker and the subject whereon he converses. I have no doubt that it is from the habit of smoking that Turks and American Indians are such monstrous well-bred men. pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish: it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected: in fact, dear Bob, I must out with it - I am an old smoker. At home I have done it up the chimney rather than not do it (the which I own is a crime). I vow and believe that the cigar has been one of the greatest creature-comforts of my life companion, a gentle stimulant, an amiable anodyne, a cementer of friendship. May I die if I abuse that kindly weed which has given me so much pleasure!

The

a kind

Since I have been a member of that Club, what numbers of men have occupied this room and departed from it, like so many smoked-out cigars, leaving nothing behind but a little disregarded ashes! Bob, my boy, they drop off in the course of twenty years, our boon companions, and jolly fellow bottlecrackers. I mind me of many a good fellow who has talked and laughed here, and whose pipe is put out for ever. Men, I remember as dashing youngsters but the other day, have passed into the state of old fogies: they have sons, sir, of almost our age, when first we joined the "Polyanthus." Grass grows over others in all parts of the world. Where is poor Ned? Where is poor Fred? Dead rhymes with Ned and Fred too their place knows them not their names one year appeared at the end of the Club list, under the dismal category of Members Deceased," in which you and I shall rank some day. Do you keep that subject steadily in your mind? I do not see why one shouldn't meditate upon Death in Pall Mall as well as in a howling wilderness. There is enough to remind one of it at

every corner.

There is a strange face looking out of Jack's old