ural, if not a strictly logical, conclusion, that the adept in one science is not much of a fool in the other. The sermons may be still as beautifully unintelligible to them as the wrist-play, but they will at least have a pleasant consciousness that their teacher knows what he is about. There will be something gained, too, by establishing the fact that the parson is human, and is not, as they are much given to think, the natural born enemy of everything in the shape of fun, because he has peculiar crotchets about Sunday-school and pitch-and-toss. His presence and example on the cricket-ground may open their eyes to the strange fact that an English sport can be carried on without low language, without quarrelling, and without drink. Not a very high step in moral and religious training; but a wise builder usually begins his work from the bottom, and not from the top-a principle which young ecclesiastical architects do not always bear sufficiently in mind. Of course, if cricket once takes the form of an occupation instead of a relaxation - if the clerical player takes his place at the wicket in every match within fifty miles round-then a doubt very naturally suggests itself whether he ought not to find something to do in his parish; just as the barrister or the surgeon, who went through the whole cricket campaign with the Zingari, would be suspected of being not much missed by his clients or his patients. Cricket itself has become rather too much of an elaborate science to maintain its wholesome position as an amusement. The multiplication and the high pay of professional players have improved the play wonderfulfy, no doubt, but have made the game more of a display than an exercise. We have been told lately how many hours a-day it takes a modern public school boy to learn it thoroughly. There are not a great many who can or will devote so much time to the study, nor is it particularly desirable that they should; and the consequence is, that those who have gone through the regular professional education play very well indeed, but do not care much to play in any thing but matches, while the mass of indifferent players are discouraged from playing at all. The matches themselves are spun out into two or even three day affairs, many hours being wasted by needless delays, and thus involve a considerable expenditure of time and money. The less pretentious meetings between the old village clubs, such as Miss Mitford has so charmingly described, had much more real enjoyment in them. A great resource in older days for those who were beginning to find field sports rather too much for them was the bowling-green. It might have been seen, some years ago, attached to some pleasant suburban tavern on the outskirts of our country towns, or here and there in the larger villages. square enclosure of some quarter of an acre of beautifully level turf, with commonly a long arbour at each end, where the elders of the club, and sometimes a fair visitor or two, sat and watched the play. The game itself is not a very exciting one, as most of those who have tried it will admit, but it was a great promoter of sociality. Any one who had a pair of hands could play more or less scientifically; and those who could not or would not, went to the ground in the pleasant evenings to meet their neighbours, and sat in the quaint old arbours, smoking a quiet pipe and sipping shrub and water (considered in those days rather an elegant form of stimulant), laughing good humouredly at some more awkward cast than usual, and discussing public affairs with as much interest and not more ignorance than modern politicians. The bowling-green was the common ground upon which the doctor, the parson, the lawyer, and the well-to-do yeoman met on equal terms; and even the squire himself condescended to ride down now and then after his dinner, and play a friendly rubber with his neighbours. For it was rather an aristocratic than a plebeian amusement, skittles pertaining more to the vulgar sort. Most large country-houses had their private green; and it was the last amusement which the unfortunate Charles I. enjoyed when the coarse summons of Cornet Joyce interrupted the quiet game at Holdenby. the On this side of the Tweed we are fortunate in having retained a game which was once popular, in some form or another, all over England and Scotland, but is now confined almost entirely to the latter noble science of Golf. It offers no such attractions as cricket does to bystanders, nor does it require in the players the spring and elasticity which few men retain after forty; but it requires steady practice and rare skill to play well, and is a first-rate exercise to a man who is nearing his grand climacteric, and fails to appreciate so thoroughly as in younger days the glory of standing up (even in the best of pads) against balls which come in from the "professional's" hand with the force of a catapult. A walk round the Links of Musselburgh or St. Andrews on a fine October morning, club in hand, with a good partner and a couple of pleasant antagonists, is as excellent à receipt for dispersing the clouds from a hard-worked man's brain and temper as can well be devised; and it seems remarkable that no attempt has been made to introduce the game in those English towns which have an open racecourse or other available ground close at hand. One intelligent Englishman, who has been in the habit of visiting St. Andrews (the metropolis of golf), has been so thorough inoculated with the spirit of the game, that he has established a club on the downs near Bideford. The ground is said to be eminently suited for the purpose; and we wish this real philanthropist all the success his enterprise deserves. This national game, too, was a favourite with King Charles, who, for all his melancholy looks, seems to have had a taste for active sports. He was playing golf on Leith Links when he was suddenly called back to London by the news of O'Neill's rebellion in Ireland.* A great revolution has been made in the summer life of country society by the introduction of croquet; a game of mysterious origin, reported to be of Irish birth, but which the Saxon has taken to with a wonderful enthusiasm. It is a sign of a want which must have been pretty gene A friend reminds us that we are, after all, but a Philistine in the matter of golf. For an "uneducated" man, as they would say on the golfing green, he thinks the remarks show some appreciation of the game. But he begs to bear his own testimony: "I have played golf, boy and man, for upwards of thirty years, and have no hesitation in giving it the preference to every game or sport I ever had the good fortune to try. It looks quiet enough, but at no game does the interest rise higher. I have seen men, trained to adventure and sport of all kinds, moving about with cheek pale and voice quivering when the crisis came in a well-contested golf-match. No man, indeed, whom I ever saw, could at all times command his nerve at golf; and although it is eminently a friendly social game, I am ashamed to say the temper frequently gives way also. These little excitements add to the fun when the fight is over; but the weaknesses of the adversary require to be treated very tenderly, and it is unsafe to taunt the conquered party; indeed, no man who deserves to win a match at golf would do "One great obstacle to the spread of golf is the rare occurrence of places so blessed as to have 'links' or downs really adapted for it: but another and still more formidable obstacle is the extreme difficulty of learning to play the game, simple as it looks. It has been said that to be a great golfer requires the devotion of a lifetime, besides a natural aptitude;' and the few men who in any generation have attained the first rank, shows that there is some truth in this. But there is this consolation, that the humblest performer finds an equal enjoyment in the sport, and in talking it over after dinner he can always play a splendid game.' A great advantage which golf has over cricket, rackets, &c., is, that it can be played far on into lite with as much zest as in oue's youngest days. 80. In the very last match I played, one of our antago nists was a grand old veteran of eighty, and no lad at a public-school cricket-match could have been keener, or have enjoyed the game more thoroughly." rally felt, that such a very mild invention should have been hailed as a social revolution. Go where one will, whole families and their visitors are to be seen mallet in hand, whose great object in life, from the little girl of six to the grandpapa of sixty, seems to be to get through their hoops. The game itself, as game, is tolerable, and that is all. It admits of considerable skill and judgment if well played, and it may be played in some fashion by the most awful bunglers without totally losing their self-respect. In fact, as Corporal Nym would say, "that's the humour of it." A man who plays cricket, and marches in a dignified manner, elaborately gloved and padded, with the eyes of a critical public upon him, from the dressing-tent to the wicket, merely to have the stumps rattled about his legs by the first straight ball, and then, like the King of France, march back again, soon gets tired of an exhibition of himself whose glory is dearly bought by five or six hours of fielding. in which he does nothing but let a catch slip through his fingers. After a season or so he declares himself "out of practice," and doesn't see the fun of the thing so clearly as his friend who plays a brilliant innings of three hours, and brings his bat out amidst a rattle of applause. The young lady who never by any chance, at an archery meeting, puts an arrow into the target, finds her failures grow less and less interesting to other people as well as to herself, and takes to some kind of artillery which promises to be more successful. But on the croquet-ground the proportion of bad players is generally so great, that every one seems perfectly satisfied with his or her performance; and the most helpless bunglers (usually being ladies) become objects of affectionate interest to their more skilful partners, being looked up continually, and helped through difficult hoops, and put into good places, and rescued from perilous neighbourhoods, and brought back into the way that they should go in, in a manner which gives a very hopeful view of human nature, but may be accounted for on other considerations. In many points the croquet-ground affords as apt illustrations of the great game of life as the more familiar type of the chess-board. The players make stepping-stones of their friends and their enemies alike to further their own ambitious projects, and will sometimes sacrifice the humble interests of a friend in the hope of disappointing the schemes of an enemy. They do evil that good may come, with the result that the evil certainly comes and the good doesn't. They despise the And then players do not always contrive to get hitched into the right set, which is as bad as having to take quite the wrong person down to dinner. So when it comes to "red's" turn to play, red's eyes and thoughts are continually found to be fixed in quite another direction - say upon "blue" in the other set which gives to the game a distrait and bewildering character, somewhat trying to the patience of those who are playing in earnest. Still, it is a great blessing on the whole to rural mothers of families, and the first introducer of it deserves to have a statue erected at the public expense. With the ball in the one hand and the mallet in the other, the effect would be quite imperial. But in this case, as in so many others, the world knows nothing of its greatest benefactors. little quiet duties and opportunities which is more doubtful. The pleasure of taking lie within their reach, and dash off with an incapable partner through all her hoops the idea of accomplishing some brilliant depends a good deal upon - circumstances. coup, which fails. In one feature, however, the parallel curiously breaks down. In actual life, most people are ready to give a helping hand to those who are getting on well in the game; "nothing succeeds," as they say, "like success;" and the more hoops a player can contrive to work himself through (even though by the most palpable pushing), the more sure he is to find eager friends to take him on to the next, and carry him to the goal in triumph. But no one comes back to pick up the poor devil who makes a fiasco at first start, or has been driven hopelessly out of his course by some unscrupulous antagonist. Whereas at croquet, it is these lame ducks who, as the game goes on, become the centre of charitable anxieties, and whose most perverse blunderings only insure a double attention on the part of their friends; - the fact being, that at croquet your own final success depends upon the progress of your slowest friend, and you cannot possibly drop him en route, however great a drag he may be, because you cannot win your own game without him. The only analogy in society is in the case of the scamp of the family, whom every relative is anxious to get into some safe place, that he may be no longer a scandal to the name. And it must be sometimes felt that if, as at croquet, he could be taken up to the stick, and killed dead at once, it would be the best thing for all parties. The revival of archery has been by no means equally successful. Most people don't pretend to shoot, and most of those who do, shoot abominably. The men who might be good shots, are busy with riflepractice. So the thing is left chiefly to the curates and the young ladies, and becomes slow in consequence. It is a pity, for it is one of the most graceful of out-door exercises, and when fairly good, very pretty to look at; and it is somewhat curious that the most historical and the least barbarous of our national pastimes should have fallen into such general disuse. But attempts at reviving the old sports of But the morals of croquet are probably our ancestors, which has been a popular too little heeded by the players. It is a idea of late years, have not been successgreat institution, nevertheless. All the ful. It is not likely that they should be. people who, in a country-house, are some- History may repeat itself, but popular tastes times so difficult to amuse- all the casual and habits of life do not, except in a forced visitors who may drop in of an afternoon and unnatural fashion. Such attempts at - all the younger members of neighbouring reviving the past only last with the first families who are of difficult ages, to whom enthusiasm of their promoters; the moveyou want to be civil and really don't know ment is "wilful, not spontaneous." Hawkhow can be safely turned loose upon the ing was a noble pastime in its own day; lawn in favourable weather, and left to its very vocabulary has a romantic attracsort themselves into one or more games. tion. The imaginative reader longs to go Send out a little tea and fruit, and really straight from one of the Waverly novels, or the entertainer's responsibilities are at an Bracebridge Hall, and take his falcon on his end, and the great duties of society are fist, and gallop, with some fair rider at his performed with an ease and simplicity side, out upon the breezy downs, as they which is quite delightful. You have did in days of yore. Enthusiastic gentle brought people together, and given them men have tried it, with much pains and something to do, which is a great point expense, in modern England, and the regained. To those who have got their flirt- sult was not much more satisfactory, we ations before them, at all events, the ar- suspect, in most cases, that in the instance rangement is satisfactory enough. To the of a friend who joined one such party, and lookers on, and perhaps to some of the whose horse tumbled into a rabbit-hole gentlemen players, the positive enjoyment while his eyes were fixed upon the 66 that one form of rational enjoyment - the oldest, the most universally attractive, and in itself the most unobjectionable the theatre- has for many reasons, and owing quarry," and the hawk fastened bill and claws into his wrist, and was not to be adjured by any terms of art. It is the same with attempts to bring back the old Christmas revels; such things may have a sort of to very contradictory influences, by no success, but it is the success of a masquerade, in which the unreality makes part of the amusement. The boar's head and the wassail bowl were good things in their day; but even in the hall of Queen's College the guests prefer the modern turtle and champagne. My lord of misrule, in these days, would undoubtedly have to finish his evening in the custody of the county police. To try to sew a patch of old cloth upon the new garment is even a greater mistake than the reverse process in the proverb. But this tendency to fall back upon obsolete ideas shows how difficult a question amusement is. If we really understood the thing, we should no more think of resuscitating our ancestors' games than of republishing their theories of geology or surgery. If philanthropists would find some corner in their brain for this question of amusement, and hit upon some ideas that would meet the wants and habits of our own days, they would be national benefactors indeed. If the Social Science Congress would devote a sub-section to the subject, we could forgive them a great deal of the grander nonsense which they talked at their gatherings. We want a new King James to give us a modern Book of Sports, enjoined by royal ordinance. means maintained the comparative place in People who live in London have, of course, no lack of resources which may be classed as amusements. But these, to busy men, savour more of weariness than relaxation. Club life-the Londoner's great resource is for the most part solitary and selfish. The more intimate social relations which exist amongst some classes of artists are regarded by the outside world as rather too " Bohemian;" and possibly, as modern English society is constituted, it may be difficult to step out of the stiffness of high respectability without stepping into the other extreme. We do everything at high pressure. Yet it is probably a fact, and a fact which has a very pleasant significance, that the intercourse between those who may be called the more intellectual workers meaning by this all those who are more or less engaged in literature, art, or science has less of formal restraint, and more of that genuine social enjoyment which alone makes society a relaxation, than can be found in any other of the various combinations in which people find themselves thrown together. It is a pity FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. IV. 59. classes in country towns, probably, ever enter the doors of their own theatre unless on some very exceptional occasion. Whether, under the old state of things, there were not happier faces to be seen, among the young people at any rate, than are to be seen now in the lecture-room and at the classical concerts, is what cannot be fairly decided without getting a photograph of the past generation; of which, unhappily, we possess only caricatures. In country towns the theatre has fallen into hopeless discredit. The general features of society, even in a provincial capi- There will always be plenty of people tal, are so entirely altered from what they who insist upon being wiser than Heaven were fifty years ago, by the removal of made them, and who look upon this world nearly every family not bound to the place as a school which has no play-hours. There by professional ties, that the number of are those who consider all amusement as those who would be the natural patrons of more or less a waste of that precious time a respectable performance is very much which was given to man to employ in get lessened. And every one now goes up to ting money. And there are those whose London, and conceives himself too critical narrow and grudging creed only differs to be pleased with a mere country enter- from that of the worldly money-maker in tainment. If the old boxes at York and that their principles are, as Sidney Smith Bath and Liverpool could but speak, they happily termed it, other-worldly" who would have a pathetic contrast to draw be- talk and act as if all pleasant things were tween their present and their past, when snares of the devil. But these two classes their occupants were county families who do not make up the majority of the world, had driven in many miles " to see the play," nor the best of it. The danger is, lest be and met there the friends and connections tween them both they should tempt some who had not yet grown too grand to live weaker vessels to grow ashamed of their next door to trade; when there were actors natural craving for honest and wholesome on the stage whom London managers came recreation, and try to veil it under some down to see, and who did not always choose shabby disguise. And there is the greater to sacrifice their position as" leader of the danger, that if all amusement is indiscrim circuit " even to the tempting of the metro- inately classed as frivolity and waste of politan charmer. As the quality of the time, there are always plenty of foolish audience deteriorated, so, in the natural people who will rack their empty brains to course of things, did that of the actors. show how thoroughly they can justify the Few member of the higher professional description. WHITTIER TO COLFAX. COLFAX! - well chosen to preside The hissing of the Copperhead, JOHN G. WHITTIER. |