on more than one occasion there has been friction, and it is notorious that the bone of contention is to be found in the fact that the English professionals have a somewhat well-founded idea in their minds that the Australian cricketers are really professionals like themselves, and they should in both countries stand on the same footing. It is necessary, however, that some comparison be made of the conditions that existed thirty years ago, with the state of things now. This is a delicate and thorny subject, and it is almost, if not quite, impossible to avoid treading on corns; but the matter is a critical one for the welfare of the great game, and some clear understanding should be arrived at, and to attain this the public should know all the facts, that they may come to a right opinion. It has been said that a definition of the words amateur and professional forty years ago would have been easy, and this is true. The question of money for the amateur was purely a personal one for himself. He played cricket according to his means. If he was of a sufficiently high class, and was qualified to play for a leading county, he played on the home ground if his business, if he had one, allowed him, and if he could not afford railway and hotel fares, he did not play the return match, it may be two hundred miles away. No doubt there were far fewer matches in those days, for Surrey, the chief county in the ‘sixties, only played on an average ten or eleven matches a year. For an amateur of Surrey to have played in all these matches was no doubt a tolerably arduous task, but it was not an impossible one. If the first-class amateur could not afford to play away from the neighbourhood of his home, he simply declined to play. The reason was obvious, but tact forbade the cause being inquired into, and the amateur was not thought any the worse of on this account. No doubt cricket was not in one sense the serious thing it is now. There were no carefully compiled and intolerably wearisome tables of statistics that drown one in these days; nevertheless there was just as much keenness for success, but championships and records did not constitute the _summum bonum_; it was the genuine sport that was chiefly considered. In other words, the game was generally carried on, in the best sense, in more of the amateur spirit than now, and this notwithstanding the fact that far more so-called amateurs play first-class cricket now than formerly. There was more cricket in matches of the class of Gentlemen of Worcestershire against Gentlemen of Warwickshire; the famous touring pure amateur clubs, such as Quidnuncs, Harlequins, I Zingari, and Free Foresters, played as they do now; and there were as many club matches played by the M.C.C. and Surrey clubs as were in those days wanted, and in these the amateur was able to take his part.