with Kings, it was fondly believed, previously to the recent general election, that ’the world was governed.’  Until late in life he never took to whist, when he grew wildly fond of it, and played incessantly, till it is said a certain memorable event took place which caused him never to touch a card again.  The story goes that, rapt in the enjoyment of the game, he suffered a special messenger to wait for hours, to whom if he had given his attention more promptly a massacre of many hundred persons would have been prevented.  Humanity may drop a tear, but whist had nothing to regret in the circumstance; for in Metternich it did not lose a good player, and, what redeems his intelligence, he knew it.  ’I learnt my whist too late,’ he would say, with more pathos and solemnity, perhaps, than he would have used when speaking of more momentous matters of omission.

He must be a wise man indeed who, being an habitual whist-player, is aware that he is a bad one.  In games of pure skill, such as chess, and, in a less degree, billiards, a man must be a fool who deceives himself upon such a point; but in whist there is a sufficient amount of chance to enable him to preserve his self-complacency for some time—­let us say, his lifetime.  If he loses, he ascribes it to his ‘infernal luck,’ which always fills his hands with twos and threes; and if he wins, though it is by a succession of four by honours as long as the string of four-in-hands when the Coaching Club meets in Hyde Park, he ascribes it to his skill.  ‘If I hadn’t played trumps just when I did,’ he modestly observes to his partner, ‘all would have been over with us;’ though the result would have been exactly the same had he played blindfold.  To an observer of human nature, who is not himself a loser ‘on the day,’ there are few things more charming than the genial, gentle self-approval of two players of this class who have just defeated two experts, and proved, to their own satisfaction, that if fortune gives them ‘a fair chance’ or ‘something like equal cards,’ as they term the conditions of their late performance, they can play as well as other people.

Of course, the term ‘good-play’ is a relative one; the player who wins applause in the drawing-room is often thought but little of in places where the rigour of the game is observed; and the ‘good, steady player’ of the University Clubs is not a star of the first magnitude at the Portland.  The best players used to be men of mature years; they are now the middle-aged, who, with sufficient practical experience, have derived their skill in early life from the best books.  ’It is difficult to teach an old dog new tricks,’ and for the most part the old dogs despise them.  When I hear my partner boast that he is ’none of your book-players,’ I smile courteously, and tremble.  I know what will become of him and me if fortune does not give him his ‘fair chance,’ and I seek comfort from the calculation which tells me it is two to one against my cutting with him again.  How marvellous