CHAP. II.
THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF CRICKET.
The game of cricket, philosophically considered, is a standing panegyric on the English character: none but an orderly and sensible race of people would so amuse themselves. It calls into requisition all the cardinal virtues, some moralist would say. As with the Grecian games of old, the player must be sober and temperate. Patience, fortitude, and self-denial, the various bumps of order, obedience, and good-humour, with an unruffled temper, are indispensable. For intellectual virtues we want judgment, decision, and the organ of concentrativeness—every faculty in the free use of all its limbs—and every idea in constant air and exercise. Poor, rickety, and stunted wits will never serve: the widest shoulders are of little use without a head upon them: the cricketer wants wits down to his fingers' ends. As to physical qualifications, we require not only the volatile spirits of the Irishman Rampant, nor the phlegmatic caution of the Scotchman Couchant, but we want the English combination of the two; though, with good generalship, cricket is a game for Britons generally: the three nations would mix not better in a regiment than in an eleven; especially if the Hibernian were trained in London, and taught to enjoy something better than what Father Prout terms his supreme felicity, "Otium cum dig-gin-taties,"
It was from the southern and south-eastern counties of England that the game of Cricket spread—not a little owing to the Propaganda of the metropolitan clubs, which played chiefly first at the Artillery Ground, then at White Conduit Fields, and thirdly at Thomas Lord's Grounds, (of which there were two before the present "Lord's,") as well as latterly at the Oval, Kennington, and on all sides of London—through all the southern half of England; and during these last twenty years the northern counties, and even Edinburgh, have sent forth distinguished players. But considering that the complement of the game is twenty-two men, besides two Umpires and two Scorers; and considering also that cricket, unlike every other manly contest, by flood or field, occupies commonly more than one day; the railways, as might be expected, have tended wonderfully to the diffusion of cricket,—giving rise to clubs depending on a circle of some thirty or forty miles, as also to that club in particular under the canonised saint, John Zingari, into whom are supposed to have migrated all the erratic spirits of the gipsy tribe. The Zingari are a race of ubiquitous cricketers, exclusively gentlemen-players; for cricket affords to a race of professionals a merry and abundant, though rather a laborious livelihood, from the time the first May-fly is up to the time the first pheasant is down. Neither must we forget the All England and United Elevens, who, under the generalship of Clarke or Wisden, play numbers varying from fourteen to twenty-two in almost every county in England. So proud are provincial clubs of this honour that, besides a subscription of some 70l, and part or all of the money at the field-gate being willingly accorded for their services, much hospitality is exercised wherever they go. This tends to a healthy circulation of the life's blood of cricket, vaccinating and inoculating every wondering rustic with the principles of the national game. Our soldiers, we said, by order of the Horse Guards, are provided with cricket-grounds adjoining their barracks; and all of her Majesty's ships have bats and balls to astonish the cockroaches at sea, and the crabs and turtles ashore. Hence it has come to pass that, wherever her Majesty's servants have "carried their victorious arms" and legs, wind and weather permitting, cricket has been played. Still the game is essentially Anglo-Saxon. Foreigners have rarely, very rarely, imitated us. The English settlers and residents everywhere play; but of no single cricket club have we ever heard dieted either with frogs, sour crout, or macaroni. But how remarkable that cricket is not naturalised in Ireland! the fact is very striking that it follows the course rather of ale than whiskey. Witness Kent, the land of hops, and the annual antagonists of "All England." Secondly, Farnham, which, as we shall presently show, with its adjoining parishes, nurtured the finest of the old players, as well as the finest hops,—cunabula Trojæ the infant school of cricketers. Witness also the Burton Clubs, assisted by our excellent friend next akin to bitter ale. Witness again Alton ale, on which old Beagley throve so well, and the Scotch ale of Edinburgh, on which John Sparkes, though commencing with the last generation, has carried on his instructions, in which we ourselves once rejoiced, into the middle of the present century. The mountain mists and "mountain dew" suit better with deer-stalking than with cricket: our game disdains the Dutch courage of ardent spirits. The brain must glow with Nature's fire, and not depend upon a spirit lamp. Mens sana in corpore sano: feed the body, but do not cloud the mind. You, sir, with the hectic flush, the fire of your eyes burnt low in their sockets, with beak as sharp as a woodcock's from living upon suction, with pallid face and shaky hand,—our game disdains such ghostlike votaries. Rise with the lark and scent the morning air, and drink from the babbling rill, and then, when your veins are no longer fevered with alcohol, nor puffed with tobacco smoke,—when you have rectified your illicit spirits and clarified your unsettled judgment,—"come again and devour up my discourse." And you, sir, with the figure of Falstaff and the nose of Bardolph,—not Christianly eating that you may live, but living that you may eat,—one of the nati consumere fruges, the devouring caterpillar and grub of human kind—our noble game has no sympathy with gluttony, still less with the habitual "diner out," on whom outraged nature has taken vengeance, by emblazoning what was his face (nimium ne crede colori), encasing each limb in fat, and condemning him to be his own porter to the end of his days. "Then I am your man—and I—and I," cry a crowd of self-satisfied youths: "sound are we in wind and limb, and none have quicker hand or eye." Gently, my friends, so far well; good hands and eyes are instruments indispensable, but only instruments. There is a wide difference between a good workman and a bag of tools, however sharp. We must have heads as well as hands. You may be big enough and strong enough, but the question is whether, as Virgil says,
"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet,"
And; in these lines, Virgil truly describes the right sort of man for a cricketer: plenty of life in him: not barely soul enough, as Robert South said, to keep his body from putrefaction; but, however large his stature, though he weigh twenty stone, like (we will not say Mr. Mynn), but an olden wicket-keeper, named Burt, or a certain infant genius in the same line, of good Cambridge town,—he must, like these worthies aforesaid, have vous in perfection, and be instinct with sense all over. Then, says Virgil, igneus est ollis vigor: "they must always have the steam up," otherwise the bard would have agreed with us, they are no good in an Eleven, because—
"Noxia corpora tardant,
Terrenique hebetant artus, moribundaque membra;"
that is, you must suspend the laws of gravitation before they can stir,—dull clods of the valley, and so many stone of carrion; and then Virgil proceeds to describe what discipline will render those, who suffer the penalties of idleness or intemperance, fit to join the chosen few in the cricket-field:
"Exinde per amplum
Mittimur Elysium et pauci læta arva tenemus."
Of course Elysium means "Lords," and læta arva, "the shooting fields." We make no apology for classical quotations. At the Universities, cricket and scholarship very generally go together. When, in 1836, we played victoriously on the side of Oxford against Cambridge, seven out of our eleven were classmen; and, it is doubtless only to avoid an invidious distinction that "Heads v. Heels," as was once suggested, has failed to be an annual University match; though the seri studiorum—those put to school late—would not have a chance. We extract the following:—
"In a late Convocation holden at Oxford, May 30, 1851, it was agreed to aflix the University seal to a power of attorney authorising the sale of 2000l. three per cent. consols, for the purpose of paying for and enclosing certain allotments of land in Cowley Common, used as cricket grounds by members of the University, in order to their being preserved for that purpose, and let to the several University cricket clubs in such manner as may hereafter appear expedient."
From all this we argue that, on the authority of ancient and the experience of modern times, cricket wants mind as well as matter, and, in every sense of the word, a good understanding. How is it that Clarke's slow bowling is so successful? ask Bayley or Caldecourt; or say Bayley's own bowling, or that of Lillywhite, or others not much indebted to pace. "You see, sir, they bowl with their heads." Then only is the game worthy the notice of full-grown men. "A rubber of whist," says the author of the "Diary of a late Physician," in his "Law Studies," "calls into requisition all those powers of mind that a barrister most needs; "and nearly as much may be said of a scientific game of cricket. Mark that first-rate bowler: the batsman is hankering for his favourite cut—no—leg stump is attacked again—extra man on leg side—right—that's the spot—leg stump, and not too near him. He is screwed up, and cannot cut away; Point has it—persevere—try again—his patience soon will fail. Ah! look at that ball;—the bat was more out of the perpendicular—now the bowler alters his pace—good. A dropping ball—over-reached and all but a mistake;—now a slower pace still, with extra twist—hit furiously to leg, too soon. Leg-stump is grazed, and bail off. "You see, sir," says the veteran, turning round, "an old player, who knows what is, and what is not, on the ball, alone can resist all the temptations that leg-balls involve. Young players are going their round of experiments, and are too fond of admiration and brilliant hits; whereas it is your upright straight players that worry a bowler—twenty-two inches of wood, by four and a quarter—every inch of them before the stumps, hitting or blocking, is rather disheartening; but the moment a man makes ready for a leg hit, only about five inches by four of wood can cover the wicket; so leg-hitting is the bowler's chance: cutting also for a similar reason. If there were no such thing as leg-hitting, we should see a full bat every time, the man steady on his legs, and only one thing to think of; and what a task a bowler would have. That was Mr. Ward's play—good for something to the last. First-rate straight play and free leg-hitting seldom last long together: when once exulting in the luxurious excitement of a leg volley, the muscles are always on the quiver to swipe round, and the bowler sees the bat raised more and more across wicket. So, also, it is with men who are yearning for a cut: forming for the cut, like forming for leg-hit—aye, and almost the idea of those hits coming across the mind—set the muscles off straight play, and give the bowler a chance. There is a deal of head-work in bowling: once make your batsman set his mind on one hit, and give him a ball requiring the contrary, and he is off his guard in a moment."
Certainly, there is something highly intellectual in our noble and national pastime. But the cricketer must possess other qualifications; not only physical and intellectual, but moral qualifications also. Of what avail is the head to plan and hand to execute, if a sulky temper paralyses exertion, and throws a damp upon the field; or if impatience dethrones judgment, and the man hits across at good balls, because loose balls are long in coming; or, again, if a contentious and imperious disposition leaves the cricketer all 'alone in his glory,' voted the best of every eleven?"
The pest of the hunting-field is the man always thinking of his own horse and own riding, galloping against men and not after hounds. The pest of the cricket-field is the man who bores you about his average—his wickets—his catches; and looks blue even at the success of his own party. If unsuccessful in batting or fielding, he gives up all—"the wretch concentred all in self." No! Give me the man who forgets himself in the game, and, missing a ball, does not stop to exculpate himself by dumb show, but rattles away after it—who does not blame his partner when he is run out—who plays like play and not like a painful operation. Such a chilly, bleak, northwest aspect some men do put on—it is absurd to say they are enjoying themselves. We all know it is trying to be out first ball. Oh! that first look back at rattling stumps—"why, I could'nt have had right guard!"—that conviction that the ball turned, or but for some unaccountable suspension of the laws of motion (the earth perhaps coming to a hitch upon its ungreased axis) it had not happened! Then there's the spoiling of your average, (though some begin again and reckon anew!) and a sad consciousness that every critic in the three tiers of the Pavilion, as he coolly speculates "quis cuique dolor vict0, quæ gloria palmæ," knows your mortification. Oh! that sad walk back, a "returned convict;" we must all pace it, "calcanda semel via leti." A man is sure never to take his eyes off the ground, and if there's a bit of stick in the way he kicks it instinctively with the side of his shoe. Add, that cruel post mortem examination into your "case," and having to answer the old question, How was it? or perhaps forced to argue with some vexatious fellow who imputes it to the very fault on which you are so sore and sensitive. All this is trying; but since it is always happening, an "inseparable accident" of the game, it is time that an unruffled temper should be held the "differentia" of the true cricketer and bad temper voted bad play. Eleven good-tempered men, other points equal, would beat eleven sulky or eleven irritable gentlemen out of the field. The hurling of bats and angry ebullitions show inexperience in the game and its chances; as if any man in England could always catch, or stop, or score. This very uncertainty gives the game its interest. If Pilch or Parr were sure of runs, who would care to play? But as they make sometimes five and sometimes fifty, we still contend with flesh and blood. Even Achilles was vulnerable at the heel; or, mythologically, he could not stop a shooter to the leg stump. So never let the Satan icagency of the gaming-table brood on those "happy fields" where, strenua nos exercet inertia, there is an energy in our idle hours, not killing time but enjoying it. Look at good honest James Dean; his "patient merit" never "goes Out sighing" nor In, either—never in a mumbling, though a "melting mood." Perspiration may roll off him, like bubbles from a duck's back, but it's all down to the day's work. He looks, as every cricketer should look, like a man out for a holiday, shut up in "measureless content." It is delightful to see such a man make a score.
Add to all this, perseverance and self-denial, and a soul above vain-glory and the applause of the vulgar. Aye, perseverance in well-doing—perseverance in a straightforward, upright, and consistent course of action.—See that player practising apart from the rest. What an unpretending style of play—a hundred pounds appear to depend on every ball—not a hit for these five minutes—see, he has a shilling on his stumps, and Hillyer is doing his best to knock it off. A question asked after every ball, the bowler being constantly invited to remind him of the least inaccuracy in hitting or danger in defence. The other players are hitting all over the field, making every one (but a good judge) marvel. Our friend's reward is that in the first good match, when some supposed brilliant Mr. Dashwood has been stumped from leg ball—(he cannot make his fine hits in his ground)—bowled by a shooter or caught by that sharpest of all Points Ἄναξ ἄνδρων, then our persevering friend—ball after ball dropping harmless from his bat, till ever and anon a single or a double are safely played away—has two figures appended to his name; and he is greeted in the Pavilion as having turned the chances of the game in favour of his side.
Conceit in a cricketer, as in other things, is a bar to all improvement—the vain-glorious is always thinking of the lookers-on, instead of the game, and generally is condemned to live on the reputation of one skying leg-hit, or some twenty runs off three or four overs (his merriest life is a short one) for half a season.
In one word, there is no game in which amiability and an unruffled temper is so essential to success, or in which virtue is rewarded, half as much as in the game of cricket. Dishonest or shuffling ways cannot prosper; the umpires will foil every such attempt—those truly constitutional judges, bound by a code of written laws—and the public opinion of a cricket club, militates against his preferment. For cricket is a social game. Could a cricketer play a solo, or with a dummy (other than the catapult), he might play in humour or out of humour; but an Eleven is of the nature of those commonwealths of which Cicero said that, without some regard to the cardinal virtues, they could not possibly hold together.
Such a national game as cricket will both humanise and harmonise the people. It teaches a love of order, discipline, and fair play for the pure honour and glory of victory. The cricketer is a member of a wide fraternity: if he is the best man in his club, and that club is the best club in the county, he has the satisfaction of knowing his high position, and may aspire to represent some large and powerful constituency at Lord's. How spirit-stirring are the gatherings of rival counties! And I envy not the heart that glows not with delight at eliciting the sympathies of exulting thousands, when all the country is thronging to its battle-field studded with flags and tents. Its very look makes the heart beat for the fortune of the play; and for miles around the old coachman waves his whip above his head with an air of infinite importance if he can only be the herald of the joyous tidings, "We've won the day."
Games of some kind men must have, and it is no small praise of cricket that it occupies the place of less innocent sports. Drinking, gambling, and cudgel-playing, insensibly disappear as you encourage a manly recreation which draws the labourer from the dark haunts of vice and misery to the open common, where
"The squire or parson o' the parish,
Or the attorney,"
may raise him, without lowering themselves, by taking an interest, if not a part, in his sports. "Nature abhors a vacuum," especially of mirth and merriment, resenting the folly of those who would disdain her bounties by that indifference and apathy which mark a very dull boy indeed. Nature designed us to sport and play at cricket as truly as to eat and drink. Without sport you have no healthful exercise; to refresh the body you must relax the mind. Observe the pale dyspeptic student ruminating on his logic, algebra, or political economy while describing his periodical revolutions around his college garden or on Constitution Hill: then turn aside and gladden your eyes and ears with the buoyant spirits and exulting energies of Bullingdon or Lord's. See how nature rebels against "an airing," or a milestone-measured walk! While following up a covey, or the windings of a trout-stream, we cross field after field unconscious of fatigue, and retain so pleasing a recollection of the toil, that years after, amidst the din and hum of men, we brighten at the thought, and yearn as did the poet near two thousand years ago, in the words,—
"O rus, quando te aspiciam, quandoque licebit,
Ducere sollicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ."
That an intelligent and responsible being should live only for amusement, is an error indeed, and one which brings its own punishment in that sinking of the heart when the cup is drained to the dregs, and pleasures cease to please.
"Nec lusisse pudet sed non incidere ludum."
Still field-sports, in their proper season, are Nature's kind provision to smooth the frown from the brow, to allay "life's fitful fever," to—
"Raze out the written troubles of the brain.
And by some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom from that perilous stuff,
Which weighs upon the heart."
And words are these, not a whit too strong for those who live laborious days, in this high-pressure generation. And, who does not feel his daily burthen lightened, while enjoying, pratorum viva voluptas, the joyous spirits and good fellowship of the cricket-field, those sunny hours when "the valleys laugh and sing," and, between the greensward beneath and the blue sky above, you hear a hum of happy myriads enjoying their brief span too!
Who can describe that tumult of the breast, described by Æschylus,
νεαρὸς μυελὸς στέρνων
ἐντὸς ἀνάσσων
those yearning energies which find in this sport their genial exercise!
How generous and social is our enjoyment! Every happy moment,—the ball springing from the bat, the sharp catch sounding in the palm, long reach or sudden spring and quick return, the exulting throw, or bails and wicket flying,—these all are joys enhanced by sympathy, purely reflected from each other's eyes. In the cricket-field, as by the cover's side, the sport is in the free and open air and light of heaven. No incongruity of tastes nor rude collision interferes. None minds that another, how "unmannerly" soever, should "pass betwixt the wind and his nobility." One common interest makes common feeling, fusing heart with heart, thawing the frostwork of etiquette, and strengthening those silken ties which bind man to man.
Society has its ranks and classes. These distinctions we believe to be not artificial, but natural, even as the very courses and strata of the earth itself. Lines there are, nicely graduated, ordained to separate, what Burns calls, the tropics of nobility and affluence, from the temperate zones of a comfortable independence, and the Arctic circles of poverty: but these lines are nowhere less marked, because nowhere less wanted, than in the cricket-field. There we can waive for awhile the precedence of birth,—
"Contented with the rank that merit gives."
And many an humble spirit, from this temporary preferment, learning the pleasure of superiority and well-earned applause, carries the same honest emulation into his daily duties. The cricket-field suggests a new version of the words
"Æqua tellus
Pauperi recluditur
Regumque pueris.
"A fair stage and no favour." Kerseymere disdains not corduroys, nor fine clothes fustian. The cottager stumps out his landlord; scholars dare to beat their masters; and sons catch out those fathers who so often catch out them. William Beldham was many hours in the day "as good a man" as even Lord Frederick Beauclerk; and the gallant Duke of Richmond would descend from his high estate to contest the palm of manly prowess with his humblest tenantry, so far acknowledging with Robert Burns,—
"The rank is but the guinea stamp.
The man's the gowd for a' that."
Cricket forms no debasing habits: unlike the bull-fights of Spain, and the earlier sports of England, it is suited to the softer feelings of a refined age. No living creature suffers for our sport: no frogs or minnows impaled, or worms writhing upon fish-hooks,—no hare screaming before the hounds,—no wounded partridge cowering in its agony, haunts the imagination to qualify our pleasure.
Cricket lies within the reach of average powers. A good head will compensate for hand and heels. It is no monopoly for a gifted few, nor are we soon superannuated. It affords scope for a great diversity of talent. Bowling, fielding, wicket-keeping, free hitting, safe and judicious play, and good generalship—in one of these points many a man has earned a name, though inferior in the rest. There are good batsmen and the best of fields among near-sighted men, and hard hitters among weak and crippled men; in weight, nine stone has proved not too little for a first-rate, nor eighteen stone too much; and, as to age, Mr. Ward at sixty, Mr. E. H. Budd at sixty-five, and old John Small at seventy years of age, were useful men in good elevens.
Cricket is a game available to poor as well as rich; it has no privileged class. Unlike shooting, hunting, or yachting, there is no leave to ask, licence to buy, nor costly establishment to support: the game is free and common as the light and air in which it is played,—the poor man's portion: with the poorer classes it originated, played "after hours" on village greens, and thence transplanted to patrician lawns.
We extract the following:—
"The judge of the Brentford County Court has decided that cricket is a legal game, so as to render the stakeholder liable in an action for the recovery of the stakes, in a case where one of the parties had refused to play."
Cricket is not solely a game of skill—chance has sway enough to leave the vanquished an if and a but. A long innings bespeaks good play; but "out the first ball" is no disgrace. A game, to be really a game, really playful, should admit of chance as well as skill. It is the bane of chess that its character is too severe—to lose its games is to lose your character; and most painful of all, to be outwitted in a fair and undeniable contest of long-headedness, tact, manœuvring, and common sense—qualities in which no man likes to come off second best. Hence the restless nights and unforgiving state of mind that often follows a checkmate. Hence that "agony of rage and disappointment from which," said Sydney Smith, "the Bishop of broke my head with a chess-board fifty years ago at college."
But did we say that ladies, famed as some have been in the hunting field, know anything of cricket too? Not often; though I could have mentioned two,—the wife and daughter of the late William Ward, all three now no more, who could tell you—the daughter especially—the forte and the failing of every player at Lord's. I accompanied them home one evening, to see some records of the game, to their humble abode in Connaught Terrace, where many an ornament reminded me of the former magnificence of the Member for the City, the Bank Director, and the great Russia merchant; and I thought of his mansion in the once not unfashionable Bloomsbury Square, the banqueting room of which many a Wykehamist has cause to remember; for when famed, as the Wykehamists were, for the quickest and beat of fielding, they had won their annual match at Lord's (and twenty years since they rarely lost), Mr. Ward would bear away triumphantly the winners to end the day with him. But, talking of the ladies, to say nothing of Miss Willes, who revived over-hand bowling, their natural powers of criticism, if honestly consulted, would, we think, tell some home truths to a certain class of players who seem to forget that, to be a Cricketer one must still be a man; and that a manly, graceful style of play is worth something independently of its effect on the score. Take the case of the Skating Club. Will they elect a man because, in spite of arms and legs centrifugally flying, he can do some tricks of a posture-master, however wonderful? No! elegance in simple movements is the first thing: without elegance nothing counts. And so should it be with cricket. I have seen men, accounted players, quite as bad as some of the cricketers in Mr. Pips's diary. "Pray, Lovell," I once heard, "have I the right guard?" "Guard indeed! Yes! keep on looking as ugly and as awkward as you are now, and no man in England can bowl for fright!" Apropos, one of the first hints in archery is, "don't make faces when you pull your bow." Now we do seriously entreat those young ladies, into whose hands this book may fall, to profess, on our authority, that they are judges of the game as far as appearance goes; and also that they will quiz, banter, tease, lecture, never-leave-alone, and otherwise plague and worry all such brothers or husbands as they shall see enacting those anatomical contortions, which too often disgrace the game of cricket.
Cricket, we said, is a game chiefly of skill, but partly of chance. Skill avails enough for interest, and not too much for friendly feeling. No game is played in better humour—never lost till won—the game's alive till the last ball. For the most part, there is so little to ruffle the temper, or to cause unpleasant collision, that there is no place so free from temptation—no such happy plains or lands of innocence—as our cricket-fields. We give bail for our good behaviour from the moment that we enter them. Still, a cricket-field is a sphere of wholesome discipline in obedience and good order; not to mention that manly spirit which faces danger without shrinking, and bears disappointment with good nature. Disappointment! and say where is there more poignant disappointment, while it lasts, than, after all your practice for a match, and anxious thought and resolution to avoid every chance, and score off every possible ball, to be balked and run out, caught at the slip, or stumped even off a shooter. "The course of true love (even for cricket) never did run smooth." Old Robinson, one of the finest batsmen of his day, had six unlucky innings in succession: once caught by Hammond, from a draw; then bowled with shooters, or picked up at short slip: the poor fellow said he had lost all his play, thinking "the fault is in ourselves, and not our stars;" and was with difficulty persuaded to play one match more, in which—whose heart does not rejoice to hear?—he made one hundred and thirty runs!
"But, as to stirring excitement," writes a friend, "what can surpass a hardly-contested match, when you have been manfully playing an up-hill game, and gradually the figures on the telegraph keep telling a better and a better tale, till at last the scorers stand up and proclaim a tie, and you win the game by a single and rather a nervous wicket, or by five or ten runs! If in the field with a match of this sort, and trying hard to prevent these few runs being knocked off by the last wickets, I know of no excitement so intense for the time, or which lasts so long afterwards. The recollection of these critical moments will make the heart jump for years and years to come; and it is extraordinary to see the delight with which men call up these grand moments to memory; and to be sure how they will talk and chatter, their eyes glistening and pulses getting quicker, as if they were again finishing 'that rattling good match.' People talk of the excitement of a good run with the Quorn or Belvoir hunt. I have now and then tumbled in for these good things; and, as far as my own feelings go, I can safely say that a fine run is not to be compared to a good match; and the excitement of the keenest sportsman is nothing either in intensity or duration to that caused by a 'near thing' at cricket. The next good run takes the place of the other; whereas hard matches, like the snow-ball, gather as they go. This is my decided opinion; and that after watching and weighing the subject for some years. I have seen men tremble and turn pale at a near match,
'Quum spes arrectæ juvenum extultantiaque haurit
Corda pavor pulsans'—
while, through the field, the deepest and most awful silence reigns, unbroken but by some nervous fieldsman humming a tune or snapping his fingers to hide his agitation."
"What a glorious sensation it is," writes Miss Mitford, in 'Our Village,' "to be winning, winning, winning! Who would think that a little bit of leather and two pieces of wood had such a delightful and delighting power?"