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 exultantiaque haurit 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?" CHAP. III. THE HAMBLEDON CLUB AND THE OLD PLAYERS. WHAT have become of the old scores and the earliest records of the game of cricket? Bentley's Book of Matches gives the principal games from the year 1786; but where are the earlier records of matches made by Dehaney, Paulet, and Sir Horace Mann? All burnt! What the destruction of Rome and its records by the Gauls was to Niebuhr,-what the fire of London was to the antiquary in his walk from Pudding Lane to Pie Corner, such was the burning of the Pavilion at Lord's, and all the old score books—it is a mercy that the old painting of the M. C. C. was saved-to the annalist of cricket. "When we were built out by Dorset Square," says Mr. E. H. Budd, "we played for three years where the Regent's Canal has since been cut, and still called our ground Lord's,' and our dining-room the Pavilion.' Here many a time have I looked over the old papers of Dehaney and Sir H. Mann; but the room was burnt, and the old scores perished in the flames. The following are curious as the two oldest scores preserved, one of the North, the other of the NAMES OF THE PERSONS WHO PLAYED AGAINST SHEFFIELD. In 1771 at NOTTINGHAM, and 1772 at SHEFFIELD. Cricket was introduced into Eton early in the last century. Horace Walpole was sent to Eton in the year 1726. Playing cricket, as well as thrashing bargemen, was common at that time. For in Walpole's Letters, vol. i. p. 4., he says, "I can't say I am sorry I was never quite a school-boy; an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty." The fourth Earl of Carlisle learnt cricket at Eton at the same time. The Earl writes to George Selwyn, even from Manheim, that he was up, playing at cricket, before Selwyn was out of his bed. And now, the oldest chronicler is Old Nyren, who wrote an account of the cricketers of his time. The said Old Nyren borrowed the pen of our kind friend Charles Cowden Clarke, to whom John Keats dedicated an epistle, and who rejoiced in the friendship of Charles Lamb; and none but a spirit akin to Elia could have written like "Old Nyren." Nyren was a fine old English yeomen, whose chivalry was cricket; and Mr. Clarke has faithfully recorded his vivid descriptions and animated recollections. And, with this charming little volume in hand, and inkhorn at my button, in 1837 I made a tour among the cottages of William Beldham, and the few surviving worthies of the same generation; and, hav |