Part 21 (2/2)

_Mr. Gryll._ This is the only game of cards that ever pleased me. Once it was the great evening charm of the whole nation. Now, when cards are played at all, it has given place to whist, which, in my younger days, was considered a dry, solemn, studious game, played in moody silence, only interrupted by an occasional outbreak of dogmatism and ill-humour.

Quadrille is not so absorbing but that we may talk and laugh over it, and yet is quite as interesting as anything of the kind has need to be.

_Miss Ilex._ I delight in quadrille. I am old enough to remember when, in mixed society in the country, it was played every evening by some of the party. But _Chaque age a ses plaisirs, son esprit, et ses mours._{1} It is one of the evils of growing old that we do not easily habituate ourselves to changes of custom. The old, who sit still while the young dance and sing, may be permitted to regret the once always accessible cards, which, in their own young days, delighted the old of that generation: and not the old only.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ There are many causes for the diminished attraction of cards in evening society. Late dinners leave little evening. The old time for cards was the interval between tea and supper.

Now there is no such interval, except here and there in out-of-the-way places, where, perhaps, quadrille and supper may still flourish, as in the days of Queen Anne. Nothing was more common in country towns and villages, half-a-century ago, than parties meeting in succession at each other's houses for tea, supper, and quadrille. How popular this game had been, you may judge from Gay's ballad, which represents all cla.s.ses as absorbed in quadrille.{2} Then the facility of locomotion dissipates, annihilates neighbourhood.

1 Boileau.

2 For example:

When patients lie in piteous case, In comes the apothecary, And to the doctor cries 'Alas!

_Non debes Quadrilare_.'

The patient dies without a pill: For why? The doctor's at quadrille.

Should France and Spain again grow loud, The Muscovite grow louder, Britain, to curb her neighbours proud,

Would want both ball and powder; Must want both sword and gun to kill; For why? The general's at quadrille.

People are not now the fixtures they used to be in their respective localities, finding their amus.e.m.e.nts within their own limited circle.

Half the inhabitants of a country place are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Even of those who are more what they call settled, the greater portion is less, probably, at home than whisking about the world. Then, again, where cards are played at all, whist is more consentaneous to modern solemnity: there is more wiseacre-ism about it: in the same manner that this other sort of quadrille, in which people walk to and from one another with faces of exemplary gravity, has taken the place of the old-fas.h.i.+oned country-dance. 'The merry dance, I dearly love' would never suggest the idea of a quadrille, any more than 'merry England' would call up any image not drawn from ancient ballads and the old English drama.

_Mr. Gryll._ Well, doctor, I intend to have a ball at Christmas, in which all modes of dancing shall have fair play, but country-dances shall have their full share.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I rejoice in the prospect. I shall be glad to see the young dancing as if they were young.

_Miss Ilex._ The variety of the game called tredrille--the Ombre of Pope's _Rape of the Lock_--is a pleasant game for three. Pope had many opportunities of seeing it played, yet he has not described it correctly; and I do not know that this has been observed.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Indeed, I never observed it. I shall be glad to know how it is so.

_Miss Ilex._ Quadrille is played with forty cards: tredrille usually with thirty: sometimes, as in Pope's...o...b..e, with twenty-seven. In forty cards, the number of trumps is eleven in the black suits, twelve in the red:{1} in thirty, nine in all suits alike.{2} In twenty-seven, they cannot be more than nine in one suit, and eight in the other three. In Pope's...o...b..e spades are trumps, and the number is eleven: the number which they would be if the cards were forty. If you follow his description carefully, you will find it to be so.

1 Nine cards in the black, and ten in the red suits, in addition to the aces of spades and clubs, Spadille and Basto, which are trumps in all suits.

2 Seven cards in each of the four suits in addition to Spadille and Basto.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Why, then, we can only say, as a great philosopher said on another occasion: The description is sufficient 'to impose on the degree of attention with which poetry is read.'

_Miss Ilex._ It is a pity it should be so. Truth to Nature is essential to poetry. Few may perceive an inaccuracy: but to those who do, it causes a great diminution, if not a total destruction, of pleasure in perusal. Shakespeare never makes a flower blossom out of season.

Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey are true to Nature in this and in all other respects: even in their wildest imaginings.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Yet here is a combination by one of our greatest poets, of flowers that never blossom in the same season--

Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansie freakt with jet, The glowing violet,

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