haps, that no great good resulted from the substitution of public houses for out-of door diversions, relaxed. In short the practice recommenced, and the hill was again alive with men and boys, and innocent merriment; but farther than the riband matches amongst ourselves nobody dreamed of going, till this challenge strength. The B. people, on the other hand, must have been braggers born, a whole parish of gasconaders. Never was such boasting! such crowing! such ostentatious display of practice! such mutual compliments from man to man-bowler to batter, batter to bowler! It was a wonder they did not challenge all England. It must be confessed that we were a little astounded; yet we firmly resolved not to decline the combat; and one of the most spirited of the new growth, William Grey by name, took up the glove in a style of manly courtesy, that would have done honour to a knight in the days of chivalry." We were the pinched-in waist, the dandy-walk-oh they will never do for cricket! Now, our country lads, accustomed to the flail or the hammer (your blacksmiths are capital hitters,) have the free use of their arms; they know how to move their shoulders; and they can move their feet too-they can run; then they are so much better made, so much more athle--we were modest, and doubted our own tic, and yet so much lissomer-to use a Hampshire phrase, which deserves at least to be good English. Here and there, indeed, one meets with an old Etonian, who retains his boyish love for that game which formed so considerable a branch of his education; some even preserve their boyish proficiency, but in general it wears away like the Greek, quite as certainly, and almost as fast; a few years of Oxford, or Cambridge, or the continent, are sufficient to annihilate both the power and the inclination. No! a village match is the thing,-where our highest officer -our conductor (to borrow a musical term) is but a little farmer's second son; where a day-not professed players," he said; "being little labourer is our bowler, and a blacksmith our long-stop; where the spectators consist of the retired cricketers, the veterans of the green, the careful mothers, the girls, and all the boys of two parishes, together with a few amateurs, little above them in rank, and not at all in pretension; where laughing and shouting, and the very ecstasy of merriment and good humour, prevail: such a match, in short, as I attended yesterday, at the expense of getting twice wet through, and as I would attend tomorrow, at the certainty of having that ducking doubled. better than school-boys, and scarcely older: but, since they had done us the honour to challenge us, we would try our strength. It would be no discredit to be beaten by such a field." Having accepted the wager of battle, our champion began forthwith to collect his forces. William Grey is himself one of the finest youths that one shall see,-tall, active, slender, and yet strong, with a piercing eye full of sagacity, and a smile full of good humour,a farmer's son by station, and used to hard work as farmers' sons are now, liked by every body, and admitted to be an excellent cricketer. He immediately set forth to muster his men, For the last three weeks our village has been in a state of great excitement, occasioned by a challenge from our north-western neigh-remembering with great complacency that bours, the men of B., to contend with us at cricket. Now we have not been much in the habit of playing matches. Three or four years ago, indeed, we encountered the men of S., our neighbours south-by-east, with a sort of doubtful success, beating them on our own ground, whilst they in the second match returned the compliment on theirs. This discouraged us. Then an unnatural coalition between a highchurch curate and an evangelical gentlemanfarmer drove our lads from the Sunday-evening practice, which, as it did not begin before both services were concluded, and as it tended to keep the young men from the ale-house, our magistrates had winked at, if not encouraged. The sport therefore had languished until the present season, when under another change of circumstances the spirit began to revive. Half a dozen fine active lads, of influence amongst their comrades, grew into men and yearned for cricket: an enterprising publican gave a set of ribands: his rival, mine host of the Rose, an out-doer by profession, gave two; and the clergyman and his lay-ally, both well-disposed and good-natured men, gratified by the submission to their authority, and finding, per Samuel Long, a bowler comme il y en a peu, the very man who had knocked down nine wickets, had beaten us, bowled us out at the fatal return match some years ago at S., had luckily, in a remove of a quarter of a mile last Lady-day, crossed the boundaries of his old parish, and actually belonged to us. Here was a stroke of good fortune! Our captain applied to him instantly; and he agreed at a word. Indeed Samuel Long is a very civilized person. He is a middle-aged man who looks rather old amongst our young lads, and whose thickness and breadth give no token of remarkable activity; but he is very active, and so steady a player! so safe! We had half gained the match when we had secured him. He is a man of substance, too, in every way; owns one cow, two donkeys, six pigs, and geese and ducks beyond count; dresses like a farmer, and owes no man a shilling;-and all this from pure industry, sheer day-labour. Note that your good cricketer is commonly the most industrious man in the parish; the habits that make him such are precisely those which make him a good workman-steadiness, sobriety, and activity-Samuel Long might pass for the beau ideal of the two characters. Happy were we to possess him! Then we had another piece of good luck. James Brown, a journeyman blacksmith and a native, who, being of a rambling disposition, had roamed from place to place for half a dozen years, had just returned to settle with his brother at another corner of our village, bringing with him a prodigious reputation in cricket and in gallantry-the gay Lothario of the neighbourhood. He is said to have made more conquests in love and in cricket than any blacksmith in the county. To him also went the indefatigable William Grey, and he also consented to play. No end to our good fortune! Another celebrated batter, called Joseph Hearne, had likewise recently married into the parish. He worked, it is true, at the A. mills, but slept at the house of his wife's father in our territories. He also was sought and found by our leader. But he was grand and shy; made an immense favour of the thing; courted courting and then hung back;-"Did not know that he could be spared; had partly resolved not to play again-at least not this season; thought it rash to accept the challenge; thought they might do without him" "Truly I think so too," said our spirited champion; "we will not trouble you, Mr. Hearne." Having thus secured two powerful auxiliaries, and rejected a third, we began to reckon and select the regular native forces. Thus ran our list:-William Grey, 1.-Samuel Long, 2. James Brown, 3.-George and John Simmons, one capital, the other so, so, an uncertain hitter, but a good fieldsman, 5.-Joel Brent, excellent, 6.-Ben Appleton-Here was a little pause-Ben's abilities at cricket were not completely ascertained; but then he was so good a fellow, so full of fun and waggery! no doing without Ben. So he figured in the list, 7.-George Harris-a short halt there too! Slowish-slow but sure. I think the proverb brought him in, 8.-Tom Coper-oh, beyond the world, Tom Coper! the red-headed gardening lad, whose left-handed strokes send her (a cricket-ball, like that other moving thing a ship, is always of the feminine gender,) send her spinning a mile, 9.-Harry Willis, another blacksmith, 10. We had now ten of our eleven, but the choice of the last occasioned some demur. Three young Martins, rich farmers of the neighbourhood, successively presented themselves, and were all rejected by our independent and impartial general for want of merit-cricketal merit. "Not good enough," was his pithy answer. Then our worthy neighbour, the halfpay lieutenant, offered his services-he, too, though with some hesitation and modesty, was refused—“ not quite young enough," was his sentence. John Strong, the exceeding long son of our dwarfish mason, was the next candidate, a nice youth-every body likes John Strong, and a willing, but so tall and so limp, bent in the middle-a thread-paper, six feet high! We were all afraid that, in spite of his name, his strength would never hold out. "Wait till next year, John," quoth William Grey, with all the dignified seniority of twenty speaking to eighteen. "Coper's a year younger," said John. "Coper's a foot shorter," replied William: so John retired; and the eleventh man remained unchosen, almost to the eleventh hour. The eve of the match arrived, and the post was still vacant, when a little boy of fifteen, David Willis, brother to Harry, admitted by accident to the last practice, saw eight of them out, and was voted in by acclamation. That Sunday evening's practice (for Monday was the important day) was a period of great anxiety, and, to say the truth, of great pleasure. There is something strangely delightful in the innocent spirit of party. To be one of a numerous body, to be authorized to say we, to have a rightful interest in triumph or defeat, is gratifying at once to social feeling and to personal pride. There was not a ten-year old urchin, or a septuagenary woman in the parish, who did not feel an additional importance, a reflected consequence, in speaking of "our side." An election interests in the same way; but that feeling is less pure. Money is there, and hatred, and politics, and lies. Oh, to be a voter or a voter's wife, comes nothing near the genuine and hearty sympathy of belonging to a parish, breathing the same air, looking on the same trees, listening to the same nightingales! Talk of a patriotic elector!-Give me a parochial patriot, a man who loves his parish! Even we, the female partisans, may partake the common ardour. I am sure I did. I never, though tolerably eager and enthusiastic at all times, remember being in a more delicious state of excitation than on the eve of that battle. Our hopes waxed stronger and stronger. Those of our players, who were present, were excellent. William Grey got forty notches off his own bat; and that brilliant hitter Tom Coper gained eight from two successive balls. As the evening advanced, too, we had encouragement of another sort. A spy, who had been despatched to reconnoitre the enemy's quarters, returned from their practising ground, with a most consolatory report. "Really," said Charles Grover, our intelligencer-a fine old steady judge, one who had played well in his day" they are no better than so many old women. Any five of ours would beat their eleven." This sent us to bed in high spirits. Morning dawned less favourably. The sky promised a series of deluging showers, and kept its word, as English skies are wont to do on such occasions; and a lamentable message arrived at the head-quarters from our trusty comrade Joel Brent. His master, a great farmer, had begun the hay-harvest that very morning, and Joel, being as eminent in one field as in another, could not be spared. Imagine Joel's plight! the most ardent of all our eleven! a 66 knight held back from the tourney! a soldier numberless inconsistencies of which he stood from the battle! The poor swain was incon- accused. He was in love over head and ears, solable. At last, one who is always ready to but the nymph was cruel. She said no, and do a good-natured action, great or little, set no, and no, and poor Brown three times rejectforth to back his petition; and, by dint of ap-ed, at last resolved to leave the place, partly pealing to the public spirit of our worthy neigh-in despair, and partly in that hope which often bour, and the state of the barometer, talking mingles strangely with a lover's despair, the alternately of the parish honour and thunder hope that when he was gone he should be showers, of lost matches and sopped hay, he missed. He came home to his brother's accordcarried his point, and returned triumphantly ingly; but for five weeks he heard nothing with the delighted Joel. from or of the inexorable Mary, and was glad to beguile his own "vexing thoughts," by endeavouring to create in his mind an artificial and factitious interest in our cricket-matchall unimportant as such a trifle must have seemed to a man in love. Poor James, however, is a social and warm-hearted person, not likely to resist a contagious sympathy. As the time for the play advanced, the interest which he had at first affected became genuine and sincere: and he was really, when he left the ground on Sunday night, almost as enthusiastically absorbed in the event of the next day as Joel Brent himself. He little foresaw the new and delightful interest which awaited him at home, where, on the moment of his arrival, his sister-in-law and confidante, presented him with a billet from the lady of his heart. It had, with the usual delay of letters sent by private hands, in that rank of life, loitered on the road in a degree inconceivable to those who are accustomed to the punctual speed of the post, and had taken ten days for its twelve-miles' journey. Have my readers any wish to see this billet-doux? I can show them (but in strict confidence) a literal copy. It was addressed, In the mean time we became sensible of another defalcation. On calling over our roll, Brown was missing; and the spy of the preceding night, Charles Grover,—the universal scout and messenger of the village, a man who will run half-a-dozen miles for a pint of beer, who does errands for the very love of the trade, who, if he had been a lord, would have been an ambassador-was instantly despatched to summon the truant. His report spread general consternation. Brown had set off at four o'clock in the morning to play in a cricketmatch at M., a little town twelve miles off, which had been his last residence. Here was desertion! Here was treachery against that goodly state, our parish! To send James Brown to Coventry was the immediate resolution; but even that seemed too light a punishment for such delinquency. Then how we cried him down! At ten, on Sunday-night, (for the rascal had actually practised with us, and never said a word of his intended disloyalty,) he was our faithful mate, and the best player (take him for all in all) of the eleven. At ten in the morning he had run away, and we were well rid of him; he was no batter compared with William Grey or Tom Coper; not fit to wipe the shoes of Samuel Long, as a bowler; nothing of a scout to John Simmons; the boy David Willis was worth fifty of him "I trust we have within our realm was the universal sentiment. So we took tall John Strong was elected, and Brown sent to Coventry; and when I first heard of his delinquency, I thought the punishment only too mild for the crime. But I have since learned the secret history of the offence; (if we could know the secret histories of all of fences, how much better the world would seem than it does now!) and really my wrath is much abated. It was a piece of gallantry, of devotion to the sex, or rather a chivalrous obedience to one chosen fair. I must tell my readers the story. Mary Allen, the prettiest girl of M., had it seems revenged upon our blacksmith the "For mistur jem browne The inside ran thus:-"Mistur browne this is to Inform yew that oure parish playes bramley men next monday is a week, i think we shall lose without yew. from your humble servant to command" "MARY ALLEN." Was there ever a prettier relenting? a summons more flattering, more delicate, more irresistible? The precious epistle was undated; but having ascertained who brought it, and found, by cross-examining the messenger, that the Monday in question was the very next day, we were not surprised to find that Mistur browne forgot his engagement to us, forgot all but Mary and Mary's letter, and set off at four o'clock the next morning to walk twelve miles, and play for her parish and in her sight. Really we must not send James Browne to Coventry-must we? Though if, as his sister-in-law tells our damsel Harriet he hopes to do, he should bring the fair Mary home as his bride, he will not greatly care how little we say to him. But he must not be sent to Coventry-True-love forbid ! At last we were all assembled, and marched down to H. common, the appointed ground, which, though in our dominions according to the map, was the constant practising place of our opponents, and terra incognita to us. We found our adversaries on the ground as we expected, for our various delays had hindered us from taking the field so early as we wished; and, as soon as we had settled all preliminaries, the match began. faced shyness, that he could scarcely hold his bat, and was bowled out, without a stroke, from actual nervousness. "He will come off that," Tom Coper says.—I am afraid he will. I wonder whether Tom had ever any modesty to lose. Our other modest lad, John Strong, did very well; his length told in fielding, and he got good fame. Joel Brent, the rescued mower, got into a scrape, and out of it again; his fortune for the day. He ran out his mate, But, alas! I have been so long settling my Samuel Long; who, I do believe, but for the preliminaries that I have left myself no room excess of Joel's eagerness, would have staid for the detail of our victory, and must squeeze in till this time, by which exploit he got into the account of our grand achievements into as sad disgrace; and then he himself got thirtylittle compass as Cowley, when he crammed seven runs, which redeemed his reputation. the names of eleven of his mistresses into the William Grey made a hit which actually lost narrow space of four eight-syllable lines. the cricket-ball. We think she lodged in a They began the warfare-these boastful men hedge, a quarter of a mile off, but nobody of B. And what think you, gentle reader, could find her. And George Simmons had was the amount of their innings? These nearly lost his shoe, which he tossed away in challengers-the famous eleven-how many a passion, for having been caught out, owing did they get? Think! imagine! guess! to the ball glancing against it. These, toYou cannot?-Well!-they got twenty-two, gether with a very complete somerset of Ben or rather they got twenty; for two of theirs Appleton, our long-stop, who floundered about were short notches, and would never have in the mud, making faces and attitudes as been allowed, only that, seeing what they laughable as Grimaldi, none could tell whether were made of, we and our umpires were not by accident or design, were the chief incidents particular. They should have had twenty of the scene of action. Amongst the spectamore, if they had chosen to claim them. Oh, tors nothing remarkable occurred, beyond the how well we fielded! and how well we bowl- general calamity of two or three drenchings, ed! our good play had quite as much to do except that a form, placed by the side of a with their miserable failure as their bad. hedge, under a very insufficient shelter, was Samuel Long is a slow bowler, George Sim-knocked into the ditch, in a sudden rush of mons a fast one, and the change from Long's the cricketers to escape a pelting shower, by lobbing, to Simmons's fast balls posed them which means all parties shared the fate of Ben completely. Poor simpletons! they were al- Appleton, some on land and some by water; ways wrong, expecting the slow for the quick, and that, amidst the scramble, a saucy gipsey and the quick for the slow. Well, we went of a girl contrived to steal from the knee of in. And what were our innings? Guess the demure and well-appareled Samuel Long, again!-guess! A hundred and sixty-nine! a smart handkerchief, which his careful dame in spite of soaking showers, and wretched ground, where the ball would not run a yard, we headed them by a hundred and forty-seven; and then they gave in, as well they might. William Grey pressed them much to try another innings. "There was so much chance," as he courteously observed, "in cricket, that advantageous as our position seemed, we might, very possibly, be overtaken. The B. men had better try." But they were beaten sulky, and would not move-to my great disappointment; I wanted to prolong the pleasure of success. What a glorious sensation it is to be for five hours together winning-winning-winning! always feeling what a whistplayer feels when he takes up four honours, seven trumps! Who would think that a little bit of leather, and two pieces of wood, had such a delightful and delighting power? had tied around it, to preserve his new (what is the mincing feminine word ?) his new inexpressibles; thus reversing the story of Desdemona, and causing the new Othello to call aloud for his handkerchief, to the great diversion of the company. And so we parted; the players retired to their supper, and we to our homes; all wet through, all good humoured, and all happy-except the losers. To-day we are happy too. Hats, with ribands in them, go glancing up and down; and William Grey says, with a proud humility, "We do not challenge any parish; but, if we be challenged, we are ready." TOM CORDERY. The only drawback on my enjoyment, was the failure of the pretty boy, David Willis, THERE are certain things and persons that who injudiciously put in first, and playing for look as if they could never die: things of such the first time in a match among men and vigour and hardiness, that they seem constistrangers, who talked to him, and stared at tuted for an interminable duration, a sort of biro, was seized with such a fit of shame-immortality. An old pollard oak of my ac quaintance used to give me this impression. mon, as may be said to prevail between reNever was tree so gnarled, so knotted, so full puted thieves and the myrmidons of justice in of crooked life. Garlanded with ivy and wood- the neighbourhood of Bow-street. Indeed his bine, almost bending under the weight of its especial crony, the head-keeper, used someown rich leaves and acorns, tough, vigorous, times to hint, when Tom, elevated by ale, had lusty, concentrating as it were the very spirit provoked him by overcrowing, "that a stump of vitality in its own curtailed proportions, was no bad shield, and that to shoot off a hand could that tree ever die? I have asked myself and a bit of an arm for a blind, would be notwenty times, as I stood looking on the deep thing to so daring a chap as Tom Cordery." water over which it hung, and in which it This conjecture, never broached till the keeper seemed to live again-would that strong dwarf was warm with wrath and liquor, and Tom ever fall? Alas! the question is answered. fairly out of hearing, seemed always to me a Walking by the spot to-day-this very day- little super-subtle; but it is certain that Tom's there it lay prostrate; the ivy still clinging new professions did bear rather a suspicious about it, the twigs swelling with sap, and put- analogy to the old, and the ferrets, and terriers, ting forth already the early buds. There it lay and mongrels by whom he was surrounded, a victim to the taste and skill of some admirer" did really look," as the worthy keeper obof British woods, who with the tact of Ugo served, "fitter to find Christian hares and Foscolo (that prince of amateurs) has disco- pheasants, than rats and such vermin." So vered in the knots and gnarls of the exterior coat the leopard-like beauty which is concealed within the trunk. There it lies, a type of sylvan instability, fallen like an emperor. Another piece of strong nature in a human form used to convey to me exactly the same feeling-and he is gone too! Tom Cordery is dead. The bell is tolling for him at this very moment. Tom Cordery dead! the words seem almost a contradiction. One is tempted to send for the sexton and the undertaker, to undig the grave, to force open the coffin-lid-there must be some mistake. But, alas! it is too true; the typhus fever, that axe which levels the strong as the weak, has hewed him down at a blow. Poor Tom Cordery! This human oak grew on the wild North-ofHampshire country, of which I have before made honourable mention; a country of heath, and hill, and forest, partly reclaimed, enclosed, and planted by some of the greater proprietors, but for the most part uncultivated and uncivilized; a proper refuge for wild animals of every species. Of these the most notable was my friend Tom Cordery, who presented in his own person no unfit emblem of the district in which he lived the gentlest of savages, the wildest of civilized men. He was by calling ratcatcher, hare-finder, and broom-maker; a triad of trades which he had substituted for the one grand profession of poaching, which he followed in his younger days with unrivalled talent and success, and would, undoubtedly, have pursued till his death, had not the bursting of an overloaded gun unluckily shot off his left hand. As it was, he still contrived to mingle a little of his old unlawful occupation with his honest callings; was a reference of high authority amongst the young aspirants, an adviser of undoubted honour and secresy suspected, and more than suspected, as being one" who, though he played no more, o'erlooked the cards." Yet he kept to windward of the law, and indeed contrived to be on such terms of social and even friendly intercourse with the guardians of the game on M. Com in good truth did Tom himself. Never did any human being look more like that sort of sportsman commonly called a poacher. He was a tall, finely-built man, with a prodigious stride, that cleared the ground like a horse, and a power of continuing his slow and steady speed, that seemed nothing less than miraculous. Neither man, nor horse, nor dog, could out-tire him. He had a bold, undaunted presence, and an evident strength and power of bone and muscle. You might see by looking at him, that he did not know what fear meant. In his youth he had fought more battles than any man in the forest. He was as if born without nerves, totally insensible to the recoils and disgusts of humanity. I have known him take up a huge adder, cut off its head, and then deposit the living and writhing body in his brimless hat, and walk with it coiling and wreathing about his head, like another Medusa, till the sport of the day was over, and he carried it home to secure the fat. With all this iron stubbornness of nature, he was of a most mild and gentle demeanour, had a fine placidity of countenance, and a quick blue eye beaming with good-humour. His face was sunburnt into one general pale vermilion hue that overspread all his features; his very hair was sunburnt too. His costume was generally a smockfrock of no doubtful complexion, dirt-coloured, which hung round him in tatters like fringe, rather augmenting than diminishing the freedom, and, if I may so say, the gallantry of his bearing. This frock was furnished with a huge inside pocket, in which to deposit the game killed by his patrons-for of his three employments, that which consisted of finding hares for the great farmers and small gentry, who were wont to course on the common, was by far the most profitable and most pleasing to him, and to them. Every body liked Tom Cordery. He had himself an aptness to like, which is certain to be repaid in kind-the very dogs knew him, and loved him, and would beat for him almost as soon as for their master. Even May, the most sagacious of greyhounds, |