his work with the greatest ease; never took more pains than was necessary, and while others were fagging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as if he had just entered the court.

His style of play was as remarkable as his power of execution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away the game to show off an attitude, or try an experiment. He was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but that was more than any one else could even affect to do. He was the best up-hill player in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, he would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the game through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it up through laziness or want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, but let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from the ground, he never missed having them. There was not only no body equal, but nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give any other player half the game, or beat them with his left hand. His service was tremendous. He once played Woodward and Meredith together (two of the best players in England) in the Fives-court, St. Martin's street, and made seven and twenty aces following by services alone a thing unbeard of. He another time played Peru, who was considered a first-rate fivesplayer, a match of the best out of five ganes, and in the three first games, which of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace.

Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by profession. He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his smartest clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's pleasure. A person accosted him, and asked him if he would have a game. So they agreed to play for half-a-crown a game, and a bottle of cider. The first game began-it was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh won it. The next was the same. They played on and each game was hardly contested. "There," said the unconscious fives-player, “there was a stroke that Cavanagh could not take: I never played better in my life, and yet I can't win a- game. I don't know how it is." However, they played on, Cavanagh winning every game, and the bye standers drinking the cider and laughing

all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh was only four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in, and said, "What are you here, Cavanagh !" The words were no sooner pronounced than the astonished player let the ball drop from his hand, and saying, "What! have I been breaking my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh?" refused to make another effort. And yet, I give you my word," said Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, "I played all the while with my clenched fist."

He used frequently to play matches at Copenhagen-house for wagers and dinners. The wall against which they play is the same that supports the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall resounded louder than usual, the cooks exclaimed, “Those are the Irishman's balls," and the joints trembled on the spit!

Goldsmith consoled himself that there were places where he too was admired: and Cavanagh was the admiration of all the fives-courts where he ever played. Mr. Powell, when he played matches in the court in St. Martin's-street, used to fill his gallery at half-a-crown a head, with amateurs and admirers of talent in whatever department it is shown. He could not have shown himself in any ground in England, but he would have been immediately surrounded with inquisitive gazers, trying to find out in what part of his frame his unrivalled skill lay.

He was a young fellow of sense, bu mour, and courage. He once had a quarrel with a waterman at Hungerford-stairs, and they say, "served him out" in great style. In a word, there are hundreds at this day, who cannot mention his name without admiration, as the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the greatest excellence of which they have any notion)-and the noisy shout of the ring happily stood him instead of the unheard voice of pos terity.

The only person who seems to have excelled as much in another way as Cavanagh did in his, was the late John Davies, the racket-player. It was remarked of him that he did not seem to follow the ball, but the ball seemed to follow him. Give him a foot of wall, and he was sure to make the ball. The four best racket-players of that day were Jack Spines, Jem Harding, Armitage, and Church. Davies could give any one of these two hands a time, that is, half the

game, and each of these at their best, could give the best player now in London the same odds. Such are the gradations in all exertions of human skill and art. He once played four capital players together, and beat them. He was also a first-rate tennis-player, and an excellent fives-player. In the Fleet or King's Bench, he would have stood against Powell, who was reckoned the best open-ground player of his time. This last-mentioned player is at present the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to him for a motto over his door,-" Who enters here, forgets himself, his country, and his friends." And the best of it is, that by the calculation of the odds, none of the three are worth remembering!

Cavanagh died from the bursting of a blood-vessel, which prevented him from playing for the last two or three years. This, he was often heard to say, he thought hard upon him. He was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly carried off to the regret of all who

knew him.

Fives-play from the year 1780 was a chief diversion at Copenhagen-house, particularly while Mrs. Harrington remained the landlady. She was careless of all customers, except they came in shoals to drink tea in the gardens and long room up stairs, or to play at fives, skittles, and Dutch pins, and swill and smoke. The house was afterwards kept by a person named Orchard, during whose time the London Corresponding Society, in 1795, held meetings in the adjacent fields.* In 1812, it was proposed by a company of projectors to bring sea-water through iron pipes "from the coast of Essex to Copenhagen fields," and construct baths, which, according to the proposals, would yield twelve and a half per cent. on a capital of 200,0001.; but the subscription was not filled up, though the names of several eminent physicians sanctioned the undertaking, and the project failed.t

• Mr. Nelson's History of Islington. + Ibid.

After Orchard's tenancy, Copenhagenhouse was kept by one Tooth, who encou raged brutal sports for the sake of the liquors he sold. On a Sunday morning the fives-ground was filled by bull-dogs and ruffians, who lounged and drank to intoxication; so many as fifty or sixty bull-dogs have been seen tied up to the benches at once, while their masters boozed and made match after match, and went out and fought their dogs before the house, amid the uproar of idiers attracted to the “bad eminence" by its infamy. This scene lasted throughout every Sunday forenoon, and then the mob dispersed, and the vicinity was annoyed by the yells of the dogs and their drunken masters on their return home. There was also a common field, east of the house, wherein bulls were baited; this was called the bull-field. These excesses, although committed at a distance from other habitations, occasioned so much disturbance, that the magistrates, after repeated warnings to Tooth, refused him a license in 1816, and granted it to Mr. Bath, the present landlord, who abated the nuisance by refusing to draw beer or afford refreshment to any one who had a bull-dog at his heels. The bull-field has since been possessed and occupied by a great cowkeeping landlord in the neighbourhood, though by what title he holds it is not known, certainly not by admission to it as waste of the manor. This field is close to the mud cottage hereafter mento Highgate-hill. tioned in Hagbush-lane, an ancient way

Near the spot at which Hagbush-lane comes out into the Holloway-road tc Highgate, the great lord Bacon met with the cause of his death, in a way not generally known. He was taking an airing in his coach, on a winter-day, with Dr. Witherborne, a Scotchman, physiciar to James I., and the snow laying on the ground. It occurred to lord Bacor. that flesh might be preserved in snow as well as in salt; resolving to try the exporiment, they alighted from the carriage, and going into a poor woman's cottage at the foot of Highgate-hill, they bought a with snow, which so chilled him that he hen; his lordship helped to stuff the body fell ill, and could not return to his lodg ings; he therefore went to the earl of Arundel's house at Highgate, where a bed was warmed for him with a pan of coals

This cottage stands no longer: its his tory is in the "simple annals of the poor." About seven years ago, an aged and almost decayed labouring man, a native of Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, with his wife and child, lay out every night upon the road side of Hagbush-lane, under what of bough and branch they could creep for shelter, till "winter's cold" came on, and then he erected this "mud edifice." He had worked for some great land-holders and owners in Islington, and still pobed about. Like them, he was, to this extent of building, a speculator; and to eke out his insufficient means, he profited, in his humble abode, by the sale of small beer to stragglers and rustic wayfarers. His cottage stood between the Jands of two rich men; not upon the land of either, but partly on the disused road, and partly on the waste of the manor. Deeming him by no means a respectable

neighbour for their cattle, they "warned him off;" he, not choosing to be houseless, nor conceiving that their domains could be injured by his little enclosure between the banks of the road, refused to accept this notice, and he remained. For this offence, one of them caused his labourers to level the miserable dwelling to the earth, and the "houseless child of want," was compelled by this wanton act to apply for his family and himself to be taken into the workhouse. His application was refused, but he received advice to build again, with information that his disturber was not justified in disturbing him. In vain he pleaded incompetent power to resist; the workhouse was shut against him, and he began to build another hut. He had proceeded so far as to keep of the weather in one direction, when wealth again made war upon poverty, and while away from his wife