little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel; perpetually changing
postures and connexions; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings
to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a breath;--but the wars of
whist were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational,
antipathies of the great French and English nations.

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her favourite game.
There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage--nothing
superfluous. No _flushes_--that most irrational of all pleas that
a reasonable being can set up:--that any one should claim four by
virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, without reference
to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions
of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as pitiful
an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised
superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things.--Suits
were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniformity of array to
distinguish them: but what should we say to a foolish squire, who
should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets,
that never were to be marshalled--never to take the field?--She even
wished that whist were more simple than it is; and, in my mind, would
have stript it of some appendages, which, in the state of human
frailty, may be venially, and even commendably allowed of. She saw no
reason for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not
one suit always trumps?--Why two colours, when the mark of the suits
would have sufficiently distinguished them without it?--

"But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably refreshed with the variety.
Man is not a creature of pure reason he must have his senses
delightfully appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, where
the music and the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker