embezzled or applied to his own use considerable sums of money
belonging to them. It appeared in evidence that the prisoner was

sent by his employers to the Continent to take orders for
carriages; he was allowed a handsome salary, and was furnished

with carriages for sale. The money he received for them he was
to send to his employers, after deducting his expenses; but

instead of so doing, he gambled nearly the whole of it away. The
following letter to his master was put in by way of explanation

of his career:--`Sir,--The errors into which I have fallen have
made me so hate myself that I have adopted the horrible

resolution of destroying myself. I am sensible of the crime I
commit against God, my family, and society, but have not courage

to live dishonoured. The generous confidence you placed in me I
have basely violated; I have robbed you, and though not to enrich

myself, the consciousness of it destroys me. Bankruptcy,
poverty, beggary, and want I could bear--conscious integrity

would support me: but the ill-fated acquaintance I formed led me
to those earthly hells--gambling houses; and then commenced

my villainies and deceptions to you. My losses were not large at
first; and the stories that were told me of gain made me hope

they would soon be recovered. At this period I received the
order to go to Vienna, and on settling at the hotel I found my

debts treble what I had expected. I was in consequence compelled
to leave the two carriages as a guarantee for part of the debt,

which I had not in my power to discharge. I had hoped such
success at Vienna as would enable me to state all to you; but

disappointment blasted every hope, and despair, on my return to
Paris, began to generate the fatal resolution which, at the

moment you read this, will have matured itself to consummation.
I feel that my reputation is blasted; no way left of re-imbursing

the money wasted, your confidence in me totally destroyed, and
nothing left to me but to see my wife and children, and die.

Affection for them holds me in existence a little longer. The
gaming table again presented itself to my imagination as the only

possible means of extricating myself. Count Montoni's 3000
francs, which I received before you came to Paris, furnished me

with the means--my death speaks the result! After robbery so
base as mine, I fear it will be of no use for me to solicit

your kindness for my wretched wife and forlorn family. Oh, Sir,
if you have pity on them and treat them kindly, and do not leave

them to perish in a foreign land, the consciousness of the act
will cheer you in your last moments, and God will reward you and

yours for it tenfold. Their sensibilities will not cause them to
need human aid. Thus I shall be threefold the murderer. I thank

you for the kindness you have rendered me; and I assure your
brother that he has, in this dreadful moment, my ardent wishes

for his welfare here and hereafter. I have so contrived it that
you will see a person at the Prince's tomorrow, who will

interpret for you. In mentioning my fate to him, you will not
much serve your own interest by blackening my character and

memory. I subjoin the reward of my villainies and the correct
balance of the account. Count Edmond's regular bills I have not

received; his valet will give you them; the others are in a
pocket-book, which will be found on my corpse somewhere in the

wood of Boulogne.
`Signed, W. KINSBY.'

It appears, however, that the gentleman changed his mind and
did not commitsuicide, but surrendered at the Insolvent Debtor's

Court to be dealt with according to law, which was a much wiser
resolution.

To the games of Faro, Hazard, Macao, Doodle-do, and Rouge et
Noir, more even than to horse-racing, many tradesmen, once

possessing good fortunes and great business, owed their
destruction. Thousands upon thousands have been ruined in the

vicinity of St James's. It was not confined to youths of fortune
only, but the decent and respectabletradesman, as well as the

dashing clerk of the merchant and banker, was ingulfed in its
vortes.

The proprietors of gaming houses were also concerned in
fraudulent insurances, and employed a number of clerks while the

lotteries were drawing, who conducted the business without risk,
in counting-houses, where no insurances were taken, but to which

books were carried, as well as from the different offices in
every part of the town, as from the _Morocco-men_, who went from

door to door taking insurances and enticing the poor and middling
ranks to adventure.

It was gambling, and not the burdens of the long war, nor the
revulsion from war to peace, that made so many bankruptcies

in the few years succeeding the Battle of Waterloo. It was the
plunderers at gaming tables that filled the gazettes and made the

gaols overflow with so many victims.
A foreigner has advanced an opinion as to the source of the

gambling propensity of Englishmen. `The English,' says M.
Dunne,[68] `the most speculative nation on earth, calculate even

upon future contingences. Nowhere else is the adventurous rage
for stock-jobbing carried on to so great an extent. The fury of

gambling, so common in England, is undoubtedly a daughter of this
speculativegenius. The _Greeks_ of Great Britain are, however,

much inferior to those of France in cunning and industry. A
certain Frenchman who assumed in London the title and manners of

a baron, has been known to surpass all the most dexterous rogues
of the three kingdoms in the art of robbing. His aide-de-camp

was a kind of German captain, or rather _chevalier d'industrie_,
a person who had acted the double character of a French spy and

an English officer at the same time. Their tactics being at
length discovered, the baron was obliged to quit the country;

and he is said to have afterwards entered the monastery of
La Trappe,' where doubtless, in the severe and gloomy religious

practices of that terrible penitentiary, he atoned for his past
enormities.

[68] `Refexions sur l'Homme.'
`Till near the commencement of the present century the favourite

game was Faro, and as it was a decidedadvantage to hold the
Bank, masters and mistresses, less scrupulous than Wilberforce,

frequently volunteered to fleece and amuse the company. But
scandal having made busy with the names of some of them, it

became usual to hire a professed gamester at five or ten guineas
a night, to set up a table for the evening, just as any operatic

professional might now-a-days be hired for a concert, or a band-
master for a ball.

`Faro gradually dropped out of fashion; Macao took its place;
Hazard was never wanting; and Whist began to be played for stakes

which would have satisfied Fox himself, who, though it was
calculated that he might have netted four or five thousand a year

by games of skill, complained that they afforded no excitement.
`Wattier's Club, in Piccadilly, was the resort of the Macao

players. It was kept by an old _maitre d'hotel_ of
George IV., a character in his way, who took a just pride in the

cookery and wines of his establishment.
`All the brilliant stars of fashion (and fashion was power then)

frequented Wattier's, with Beau Brummell for their sun. `Poor
Brummell, dead, in misery and idiotcy, at Caen! and I remember

him in all his glory, cutting his jokes after the opera, at
White's, in a black velvet great-coat, and a cocked hat on his

well-powdered head.
`Nearly the same turn of reflection is suggested as we run over

the names of his associates. Almost all of them were ruined--
three out of four irretrievably. Indeed, it was the forced

expatriation of its supporters that caused the club to be broken
up.

`During the same period (from 1810 to 1815 or thereabouts) there
was a great deal of high play at White's and Brookes',

particularly at Whist. At Brookes' figured some remarkable
characters--as Tippoo Smith, by common consent the best Whist-

player of his day; and an old gentleman nicknamed Neptune, from
his having once flung himself into the sea in a fit of despair at