t
or literature, law, science, or learning of any kind were always
welcomed.

It was as pleasant a lounge as any in London, not excepting
Tattersall's, which has equal claims on my memory. At Crockford's I
met Captain H----, a wonderful gamester; he died early, but not too
early for his welfare, seeing that all the chances of life are against
the gambler. Padwick, too, I knew; he entertained with refined and
lavish hospitality. He was one of the winners in the game of life who
did not die early. He told good stories and put much interest into
them. He knew Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner--a sporting man of the
first water, who poisoned John Parsons Cook for the sake of his
winnings, and his wife and mother, it was said, for the sake of the
insurance on their lives. Padwick knew everybody's deeds and misdeeds
who sought to increase his wealth on the turf or at the gaming-table.
He was a just and honourable man, but without any sympathy for fools.

Others I could recall by the score, men of character and of no
character. Some I knew afterwards professionally, and especially one,
who, although convicted of crime, escaped by collusion the sentence
justly passed upon him. Another was a man of position without
character, whose evil habits destroyed the talent that would have made
him famous.

But I need not dwell on the manifold characters and scenes of
Crockford's. There has been nothing like it either in its origin or
its subsequent history. There will never be anything like it in an
age of refinement and laws, which have been wisely passed for the
protection of fools.

The founder of this fashionable gambling place was at one time a small
fishmonger in either the Strand or Fleet Street, I forget which, and
lived there till he removed to St. James's Street, where he became a
fisher of men, but never in any other than an honourable way.

"His Palace of Fortune" was of the grandest style of architectural
beauty. It was one in which the worshippers of Fortune planked down
the last acre of their patrimonial estates to propitiate the fickle
goddess in the allurements of the gaming-table. But how _can_ Fortune
herself give two to one on all comers? Some _must_ lose to pay the
winners.

At this palatial abode the most sumptuous repasts were prepared by the
most celebrated _chefs_ the world could produce, and were eaten by the
most fastidious and expensive gourmands Nature ever created; gamblers
of the most distinguished and