are also a new and independent thing. They seem to me to have no little charm. Cricket no doubt has been moralised before-indeed is there not Fred Lillywhite's epitaph in Highgate Cemetery?—but never so sweetly and reasonably.

PART I.

Wake! for the Ruddy Ball has taken flight
That scatters the slow Wicket of the Night;

And the swift Batsman of the Dawn has driven
Against the Star-spiked Rails a fiery Smite.

Wake, my Beloved! take the Bat that clears
The sluggish Liver, and Dyspeptics cheers:

To-morrow? Why, to-morrow I may be
Myself with Hambledon and all its Peers.

To-day a Score of Batsmen brings, you say?
Yes, but where leaves the Bats of Yesterday?

And this same summer day that brings a Knight
May take the Grace and Ranjitsinjh away.

Willsher the famed is gone with all his 'throws,'
And Alfred's Six-foot Reach where no man knows ;
And Hornby-that great hitter his own Son
Plays in his place, yet recks not the Red Rose.

And Silver Billy, Fuller Pilch and Small,
Alike the pigmy Briggs and Ulyett tall,

Have swung their Bats an hour or two before,
But none played out the last and silent Ball.

Well, let them Perish! What have we to do
With Gilbert Grace the Great, or that Hindu?

Let Hirst and Spooner slog them as they list,
Or Warren bowl his snorter'; care not you!

With me along the Strip of Herbage strown,
That is not laid or watered, rolled or sown,

Where name of Lord's and Oval is forgot,
And peace to Nicholas on his bomb-girt Throne.

A level Wicket, as the Ground allow,

A driving Bat, a lively Ball, and thou

Before me bowling on the Cricket-pitch—
O Cricket-pitch were Paradise enow!

PART II.

I listened where the Grass was shaven small,
And heard the Bat that groaned against the Ball:

Thou pitchest Here and There, and Left and Right,
Nor deem I where the Spot thou next may'st Fall.

Forward I play, and Back, and Left and Right,
And overthrown at once, or stay till Night:

But this I know, where nothing else I know,
The last is Thine, how so the Bat shall smite.

This thing is sure, where nothing else is sure,
The boldest Bat may but a Space endure;

And he who One or who a Hundred hits
Falleth at ending to thy Force or Lure.

Wherefore am I allotted but a Day
To taste Delight, and make so brief a stay ;
For meed of all my Labour laid aside,
Ended alike the Player and the Play.

Behold, there is an Arm behind the Ball,

Nor the Bat's Stroke of its own Striking all;

And who the Gamesters, to what end the Game,

I think thereof our Willing is but small.

Against the Attack and Twist of Circumstance

Though I oppose Defence and shifty Glance,

What Power gives Nerve to me, and what Assaults,—
This is the Riddle. Let dull bats cry' Chance.'

Is there a Foe that [domineers] the Ball?
And one that Shapes and wields us Willows all?
Be patient if Thy Creature in Thy Hand
Break, and the so-long-guarded Wicket fall!

Thus spoke the Bat. Perchance a foolish Speech
And wooden, for a Bat has straitened Reach :
Yet thought I, I had heard Philosophers
Prate much on this wise, and aspire to Teach.

Ah, let us take our Stand, and play the Game,
But rather for the Cause than for the Fame;
Albeit right evil is the Ground, and we
Know our Defence thereon will be but lame.

O Love, if thou and I could but Conspire
Against this Pitch of Life, so false with Mire,

Would we not Doctor it afresh, and then
Roll it out smoother to the Bat's Desire ?

A few notes would not be out of place. Hambledon is the village in Hampshire where the game was first taken with all the seriousness of a religious rite, as, of course, it should be. The history of the Hambledon cricketers was written by John Nyren in 1833, in a wonderful little book still available in reprints. I suppose that the Knight whom Thompson had in mind was Albert Knight of Leicestershire, whose writings on cricket he greatly admired. Willsher was Edgar Willsher, 'The Lion of Kent,' and a member

of the All England team, born in 1828. A 'fast and ripping' left-handed round-arm bowler, in or about 1857 his style came under severe criticism in 'Bell's Life,' but he survived the attack. Mr. Haygarth calls him one of the most amiable, as well as one of the staunchest, of cricketers in the world.' To the name of Alfred the poet himself has put the following footnote: Alfred is Alfred the Great, Alfred Mynn, W. G. of his day; six foot two, shoulder of mutton fist, foot on which he leaned made a grave in soft turf, brilliant both as bat and fast bowler.' I need only add that Alfred Mynn was born at Goudhurst in 1807, and died at Thurnham, also in Kent, in 1861, mourned by all Englishmen. The younger Hornby-A. H.-is this year (1908) captain of Lancashire. May he do bravely! Silver Billy was William Beldham, of the Hambledon Club, over whose genius Nyren becomes lyrical. He lived to a very great age and died in 1860. Fuller Pilch, a Norfolk man by birth, was the best bat in England between 1820 and 1850. He played for Kent in the thirties and forties, and died at Canterbury in 1870,

Land of Hops, you hold in trust
Very sacred human dust!

There were two Smalls, both Hambledon men celebrated by Nyren. Briggs was of course Johnny Briggs, of Thompson's own county, the left-handed bowler and cover-point whose end was a tragedy, for he lost his reason through a sunstroke and died in an asylum. George Ulyett is dead too-the great and genial Yorkshireman of the seventies. The other names need no gloss. Those are the verses. Thompson wrote also a little prose on the game, including a lengthy criticism of 'The Jubilee Book of Cricket.' This review, printed in The Academy,' for September 4, 1897, is interesting not only on the literary side but for its theoretical acumen too. It contains a very minute examination of the differences between the pitched-up balls of the under-arm and the overarm bowler, and there are some discerning remarks upon back and forward play. But more to our purpose as illustrating Thompson's cricket prose is the passage in praise of Vernon Royle, another Lancashire man, at cover-point :

Fine fielding is very largely the work of a captain who is himself a fine fielder, and knows its vast importance in winning matches. Many a match has been won rather in the field than at the wicket. And, if only a boy will set himself really to study its niceties, it is a most fascinating branch of cricket. Prince Ranjitsinhji remarks on the splendid opportunities of cover-point, and cites the Rev. Vernon

VOL. XXV.-NO. 145, N.S.

5

Royle as the cover-point to whom all cricketers give the palm during the last thirty years. 'From what one hears,' he says, ' he must have been a magnificent fielder.' He was. And I notice the fact, because Vernon Royle may be regarded as a concrete example of the typical fielder, and the typical fielder's value. He was a pretty and stylish bat; but it was for his wonderful fielding that he was played. A ball for which hardly another cover-point would think of trying, he flashed upon, and with a single action stopped it and returned it to the wicket. So placed that only a single stump was visible to him, he would throw that down with unfailing accuracy, and without the slightest pause for aim. One of the members of the Australian team in Royle's era, playing against Lancashire, shaped to start for a hit wide of cover-point. No, no!' cried his partner; the policeman is there!' There were no short runs anywhere in the neighbourhood of Royle. He simply terrorised the batsmen; nor was there any necessity for an extra cover -now so constantly employed. In addition to his sureness and swiftness, his style was a miracle of grace. Slender and symmetrical, he moved with the lightness of a young roe, the flexuous elegance of a leopard—it was a sight for an artist or a poet to see him field. Briggs, at his best, fell not far short in efficiency; but there was no comparison between the two in style and elegance. To be a fielder like Vernon Royle is as much worth any youth's endeavours as to be a batsman like Ranjitsinhji, or a bowler like Richardson.

That the author of The Hound of Heaven' and 'The Anthem of Earth'should be also the most ingenious and suggestive reviewer of Prince Ranjitsinhji's work is a curious circumstance worthy of note by any Isaac Disraeli of the future.

E. V. LUCAS.

67

THE WINNING OF CANADA.

FOR Englishmen and Frenchmen the outstanding feature of the Tercentenary Celebrations at Quebec will be the dedication of the battlefields of the Plains of Abraham and Ste. Foye as a National Park for the people of Canada. The narrow tableland which lies behind Quebec, between the mighty St. Lawrence and the winding St. Charles, holds intense interest for the two races who have a common heritage in the great Dominion. It was the scene of the two final battles between the French and English in Canada when the fate of half a continent was decided; its soil was watered by the blood of commanders whose careers, and whose deaths in almost the same hour, possess a romantic and absorbing interest for both races. Each side won victory on its fields, and each can look back with pride to the history of these great events. To these compelling circumstances is to be added the important factor that for a century and a half the descendants of the conquerors and the conquered in the two battles have lived together in loyalty and amity under the same flag.

Since the far-off days when Wolfe in Canada and Clive in India were laying the foundations of the British Empire in the worldwide wars of the eighteenth century, Frenchmen and Englishmen have contested many a hard-fought field, and they have also shed their blood together in a common cause. Nowhere has this most potent cement of national friendship been poured out with happier results than amid the forests and snows of Canada. Almost while the echoes of the final clash of arms on the Plains of Abraham were still ringing in men's ears the loyalty of England's FrenchCanadian subjects was put to the test in the struggle which detached the southern half of the North American continent from the British flag. They nobly stood the trial. Neither specious pleadings on behalf of republicanism nor the sterner argument of shotted guns could win them from their newly pledged allegiance.

The part which the bishops and clergy of the Catholic Church in Canada played in that time of stress and danger is scarcely realised by the average Englishman to-day, who is not fully