The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1853-05-10 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

LIFE AT BADEN.—Hither come flocking the representatives of every nation of the world, and of almost every class in each. Royalty, princely houses, and nobility with twenty quarterings, are jostled in the indiscriminate crowd with houseless adventurers, beggared spendthrifts, and ruined debauchees. All who can contribute the clink of their Louis-d'ors to the music are welcome to this orchestra! And women, too, fair, delicate, and lovely, the tenderest flowers that ever were nursed within domestic care, mixed up with others, not less handsome perhaps, but whose svren beauty is almost diabolic by comparison. What a Babel of tongues, and what confusion of characters. The Grandee of Spain, the escaped Galley Slave, the Hungarian magnate, the London " Swell," the old and hoary gambler with snow-white moustachios, and the unfledged minor, anticipating manhood by ruining himself in his " teens." All these are blended and commingled by the influence of play; and, differing as they do in birth, in blood, in lineage, and condition, yet are they members of one guild, associates of one society—the gambling-table. And what a leveller is play ! He who whispers in the ear of the Crown Prince yonder is a branded felon from the Bagnes de Brest; the dark-whiskered man yonder, who leans over the lady's chair, is a❑ escaped forger ; the Carlist noble is asking friendly counsel of a Christino spy; the London pickpocket offers his jewelled snuff-box to an Archduke of Austria. " How goes the game to-day ?" cries a Neapolitan Prince of the Blood, and the question is addressed to a red-bearded Corsican, whose livelihood is a stiletto. Is that the beautiful Countess of Hapsburg ?" asks a fresh-looking Oxford man ; and his friend laughingly answers : " Not exactly ; it is Mademoiselle Varenne of the Odeon." The fine-looking man yonder is a Mexican General, who carried off the military chest from " Guanaguato ;" the pompous little fellow beside him is a Lucchese Count, who stole part of the Crown jewels of his sovereign; the long-haired, broad-foreheaded man, with open shirt-collar, so violently denouncing the wrongs of injured Italy, is a Russia❑ spy ; and the dark Arab behind him is a Swiss valet, more than suspected of having murdered his master in the Mediterranean. Our English contingent embraces Lords of the Bedchamber, members of parliament, railroad magnates, moneylending attorneys, legs, swells, and swindlers, and a small sprinkling of university men, out to read and be ruined—the fair sex, comprising women of a certain fast set in London, divorced countesses, a long category of the widow class, some with daughters, some without. There is an abundance of good looks, splendid dress, and money without limit ! The most striking feature of all, however, is the reckless helter-skelter pace at which every one is going, whether his pursuit be play, love, or mere extravagance. There is no such thing as calculation—no counting the cost of anything Life takes its tone from the tables, and where, as wealth and beggary succeed each other, so do every possible extreme of joy and misery ; and one wagers their passions and their emotions exactly as they do their bank-notes and their gold pieces. —The Dodd Family Abroad, by Chas. Lever.