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PAPAL LOTTERIES.
If ever anybody had cause to regret the suppression of lotteries, it is the whole tribe of play-writers and authors.

Never will there be found again a "Deus ex Machina," so serviceable or so unfailing as the lottery.
If your plot wanted a solution, or your intrigue a _denoument_, or your novel a termination, you could always cut through all your difficulties by the medium of a lottery-ticket.

The virtuous but impoverished hero became at once a very Croesus, and the worldly-minded parent bestowed his daughter and his blessing on the successful gambler, who, by the way, never purchased his own ticket, but always had it bequeathed to him as a legacy.

Alas, lottery-tickets, like wealthy uncles and places under government, have gone out of date.