never even dreamed of thirty years ago. We were then living in the days of hard hitters, and underhand bowling was as commonly met with as roundhand, or more so, but catches in the long field, both in boys' matches and mens' matches, were very seldom missed, and the reason probably was that good fielding was the first thing thought of.

In a county match, two years ago, I saw one man missed in the long-field three times in one innings off the slows; but I am bound to say the fieldsman's hands drove wonderfully well, and the ball bounded off with a bang like a ball off a racket wall.

Looking at these facts through the spectacles of experience, I begin to believe old John Bowyer's evidence as to all-round men and backbone players of his time, just as the very old lady remarked with great truth on visiting Westminster Abbey at Easter last-" Well, I don't see that the place is much changed since I was a gal!"

CHAP. VIII.

What is Good Cricket?

This is the hardest nut to crack of all. There are people who will tell me that the Lions' or the Nonpareils' average will be over a quarter of a century, and that is the test of excellence; or, if speaking of a bowler, will give the palm to the man who bowled most maiden overs.

Some people think the matches at Lord's uninteresting because the great scorers come short home sometimes owing to the turf being rougher than many other grounds; some, on the other hand, complain that cricket at Kennington Oval is a farce because the ground is like a lawn and bowlers have no chance.

It is too late now to talk of grounds being too good. There is and has been a general desire throughout England to make all cricketgrounds as level and perfect as possible; and very properly so, as there is no fun in being cut over, and to professional players a bad accident means a loss of so much money, and to an amateur, be he whom he may, at any rate it is a great inconvenience.

Going back again to my model match Gentlemen and Players, at the Oval, 1869, which I shall always quote as the best seen by the present generation (for there really was hardly a mistake made during its progress); the great charm of that match was that compara ively speaking the Gentlemen had no bowlers at all-testing the excellence of bowlers by the dashing round-hand bowling of the Players. On the other hand, the Players had some of the finest and quickest bowlers; whereas the Gentlemen relied on Messrs. Buchanan, Gilbert Grace, and Absolom-three middle-paced head bowlers. To my mind, I would prefer a match with the three gentlemen to bowl, as I believe in medium pace and head rather than in the greased lightning.

And the great admiration for the very quick round-arm_bowling raises the great question of good bowling-what is it, and how long has it existed?

Nyren claims David Harris, of the old Hambledon, as the best bowler he ever saw. Lord Frederick Beauclero was of the same opinion; and in the year 1843, when Lillywhite, Redgate, Hillyer, and Mr. Alfred

Mynn were at their best, and Cobbett had only just died, the late Mr. William Ward (who was the walking dictionary of the Marylebone Club for reference on points connected with past cricket) told me that he had never seen any one who surpassed David Harris. Nyren says of him "By continued practice and following the advice of the old Hambledon players, he became as steady as could be wished, and in the prime of his playing very rarely gave a toss. In bowling he never stooped the least in his delivery, but kept himself upright all the time. His balls were very little beholden to the ground when pitched, it was but touch and up again; and woe be to the man who did not get in to block them, for they had such a peculiar curl that they would grind his fingers against the bat."

Now the account of this reads like good bowling, and, adding Mr. William Ward's testimony to Nyren's account, I cannot see that we have any reason to doubt the fact of Harris having been as good as any man of the present day.

Test the excellence of the best men of the present day by this description, can anything more be said about it-can it have more than pace, spin, and break? True, the accuracy and pace of the present round-arm bowlers is marvellous; but my old friend John Bowyer, admitting all this, says "that kind of bowling won't finish a match, for when a man is well set and his eye is in, it is no good giving him over after over of balls of great pace, which pitch pretty much near the same spot and all come about bail-high. You want to bowl for catches when a batsman's eye is in. Now turn we to Mr. Buchanan's bowling last year in the Gentlemen and Players' match. To all appearance it was a high, round-arm trundle, without any particular object except to pitch the ball wide of the wicket. Any one who did not understand cricket would say, "If that is your best gentleman bowler, take him away." But any one who did understand the game would at once see the good policy of putting on such a bowler as Mr. Buchanan, instead of one of the greased lightning, round-arm bowlers, dead on the wicket. The Players would have played the latter on a true ground all day with a straight bat, but they could not stand all day without being tempted to hit what appeared to be such easy stuff; and Mr. Buchanan, with the aid of his field, who worked for him as if their lives depended on the issue of the game, secured eight wickets; and Mr. Absolom did the same, in addition to the glory of bowling the last man. The Gentlemen never expected to get wickets without sacrificing a number of runs. Now comes the question whether an enormous number of maiden overs proves cricket to be good or bad? Undeniably, as an exhibition of wonderful accuracy in bowling and as a test of straight batting, it is a great sight. But it is attributed to the players that in these days of averages many are more anxious to have maiden overs accredited to them than to win a match, and it is stated that the reason why Gentlemen's matches are more frequently finished than Players' matches is because the former care more about the result of the match than about themselves and their average.

As regards the chivalry of cricket, it was a much more interesting sight to see good head bowlers-such as old Lillywhite, Clarke, Cobbett, Mr. V. E. Walker, and others-working for a wicket, and depending on their field for success, than to see a bowler, however excel

lent, sending down ball after ball almost on the same spot, which rises as if mechanically to the bails. Mr. Felix, writing to me in October, 1869, says: "It is not difficult to get a sight of the ball when you have to contend against a bowler who, bowling ever so well, knows not how to use his head as well as his arm. This it was that made it so difficult to meet the bowling of the late W. Clarke, for he could bowl four distinctly different balls in one over, each ball demanding the batsman's best skill and patience."

Putting together past experience of grand matches and weighing the evidence of great players of the past, including my old friend John Bowyer, it does seem common sense to say that the perfection of cricket is when there is good head bowling and a fine field to help the bowler.

I am sorry to fall back upon my Tory notions, and to button-hole Young England again; but when he exclaims, as he does to me sometimes, "Oh bosh! Lillywhite and Sam Redgate, and Mynn and Hillyer would be no good now," I cannot help thinking if Alfred Mynn and Hillyer were to drop in as strangers on one side now, and old Lillywhite and Redgate on the other, there would be a terrible accident (as old Lilly white used to say) before or behind the wicket before long.

Perhaps past recollections bias one's mind a little, just as the prayers which one learnt at one's mother's knee come back with more force than some of the highly spiced sentiments of modern Theology; but I must see another man who stands six feet two, of gigantic but symmetrical figure, standing up his full height, taking six stately steps to the wicket, and bringing his arm round well below the shoulder, and sending the ball down like a flash of lightning dead on the wicket, before I can ever believe that there is or has been a greater cricketer than Alfred Mynn.

I must also see another little square man, with cotton braces and big hat, trying his hardest to outwit Mr. Charles Taylor or Mr. Felix, (Gentlemen and Players) with his tempting pitched up ball, and succeeding at last in getting the batsman to hit at an apparently loose leg ball, or long hop, the result of which was that the ball went far away into the field straight into the hands of some man who had been moved up by a motion of the old man's hand, which the field knew, and the spectators could not recognize, before I believe that a better head bowler ever lived than Lillywhite. It was a treat to hear his remarks when the innings was over. He, like old Bowyer, used to pronounce the word "bowl" as "owl." "Ne'er a man in England could have bowled Muster Felix or Muster Taylor, as the case might be, when he was caught. Why the ball must have looked to him as big as a church door. So I drawed him at last, for I was determined to give him ball after ball to hit, until he tried one."

I must stop, for I am off again on my hobby. Come here, Young England, I am doubly angry with you; first, for telling me that my pet players of the past would be of no good now; and, secondly, because unfortunately you have the advantage of me by five-and-twenty years in age, and you are ten stone, whereas I am thirteen, the difference being that my additional weight is all fat, and you have plenty of wind, whereas I am doubtful about mine, and that is the only reason why I don't box your ears. So go away, young man, and consider

your ears as boxed within the meaning of the Act of Parliament for abating the dog nuisance.

There is one difficulty in deciding what is good cricket, and that is proved by the sudden collapse of a great eleven, or a celebrated school of players owing to a novelty being introduced. Leaving alone the question whether the over-arm or over-head style ought ever to have been allowed, one thing is certain, that ten years ago as fine an eleven as ever came from Nottingham went all to pieces before Southerton's bowling, and ten wickets fell for 48 runs, on as good a wicket as was ever made. On this memorable occasion Pooley caught and stumped twelve men in the two innings, a feat probably without parallel. In the second innings, Daft, whom every one must admit to be one of the most brilliant cricketers who ever trod a cricket field, contrived to get 50 runs, but they were got in the most crampt, ugly, schoolboy way, and from first to last it was clear to the spectators that he was never at his ease for a moment, and his play was no more the play of the great Daft than it was the play of some unknown man.

Again, about 1845, old Clarke, with his slows, crippled the play of some of the best professionals of the day, and he contributed more than any one else to knock up the old Kent eleven.

Then Mr. Fellowes came out with his terrific semi-round bowling, and many of the players were absolutely afraid to face him, and it is recorded of old Lillywhite who was put down to go in last, that he said to the scorer, "" No, put down Lilly white absent."

When so many instances of this kind crop up from time to time, the fair inference is, that cricket gets into a groove, and the same kind of cricket is played everywhere for a time, until a sudden novelty puts every one out. True it is, that masters of the art very soon find out the difficulty, and overcome it; but if we are so much better now than we ever were, nothing ought to take us by surprise.

Sitting in my little cottage on the banks of the Thames, looking upon the green luxuriance and wondrous freshness of the May foliage, the bright sunny sky and the gem-like flowers, listening to the joyous songs of birds and the plash of oars on the rippling water, the thought has suddenly come to me to put before you a few passages in the life of one who was indeed a child of nature, and whose not uneventful career may serve, if not to "point a moral," at any rate to "adorn a tale."

Left early the orphan heir to a large estate, under the care of an honourable but highly unsympathetic and unloveable guardian, my

friend Herbert V, after profiting but little by the instructions of his private tutor, but becoming a very apt pupil to an old gamekeeper, who taught him how to tie and throw the artificial fly with sufficient neatness and dexterity to capture the golden red-spotted trout and the silver-laced grayling, to mount a horse, to handle a gun, to swim, to row, and to sail, obtained his guardian's consent at the age of sixteen to go over, with his now thoroughly subdued and complaisant tutor, Mr. Brown, to study for a year or two at the old university of Bonn.

'Twas there I first heard of him, though he had left the pleasant old Rhine town several years before I went to the same Alma Mater. Jolly old Bonn! How well I remember the old University building, an ancient palace of the Electors Palatine, with its cool halls of massive stone, its quadrangle, where the "studios" paced proudly round in the intervals between the lectures; and the grand Academishe Aula, where in the glowing summer-time the annual distribution of degrees and prizes took place, to the flourish of trumpets, beneath the ceiling decorated with grand paintings of mythological subjects.

And the big Hofgarten, with its pleasant meadow (wherein I used to catch grasshoppers for chub-fishing) and its avenues of giant elms. The quaint old market-place with its profusion of fruits and flowers, where the good-humoured Bauerinnen had always a smile and a rustic bouquet for the Herrn studenten. The Castle of Poppelsdorf, encircled by the broad moat whereon we merrily skated through many a winter's day, before the approving eyes of maids and matrons, both German and English.

The Kreuzberg with the mummied monks, strange relics of its old monastery, in its wonderful cellar, and the pleasant wooded range of the Venusberg, where often amid trees through whose fresh leaves the summer sun glanced lovingly, might be descried a group of students in full costume, heads ornamented with the quaint little round cap of the three colours of the corps, embroidered with rich oak-leaves of gold or silver, tunics of green, or blue, or black, or red, tight-fitting breeches of whitened doeskin, huge and well-polished dragoon boots, and long schlägers or rapiers, ever ready to avenge a slight or only fancied insult, or to defend the honour of a duelling corps.

And this group would form a circle, in the centre of which two hotheaded youths, without tunics, left arms fastened to their sides, and chests protected with cumbrous bandages, would stand face to face and make wonderful slashes with the points of the rapiers at each others physiognomies till first blood, or a particular cut, according to the circumstances of the duel, or the regulations of the club, terminated the

encounter.

For be it known to you, courteous reader, that in almost every students' club, except in those of the theologians, who indemnified themselves in floods of beer, one duel at least per year was de rigueur, while the more the bursch fought the more he was respected, and the more the fair-haired, large-waisted mädchen smiled upon his disfigured face.

A few weeks after my arrival I was sitting in a very smoky atmosphere, in a little room hung round with big pipes, looking out on to the broad river. And my friend and mentor, Karl von G―, a student in his fourth year, and member of one of the most aristocratic