The professionals who are not good enough to play for a first-class county have by no means so good a time. They get engaged by clubs such as are found all over South Lancashire and in the West Riding of York, and they bowl for several hours all the week to members of the club at the nets, and on Saturdays play for the club in league matches. The results of these matches are tabulated in the local newspapers and in the sporting papers published on Sundays, and in their own district cause no end of excitement. The end of the season finds one of these clubs champion of the local league; and cricket is carried on very much like football in this respect. There are senior and junior leagues, there are Pleasant Sunday afternoon leagues, and in each of them there exists a carefully considered system of tables and elaborately calculated records of averages, and the leading cricketers, like the leading football players, are heroes. The game, however, as played in such matches, is of a distinctly lower type, and if report speaks truly, the umpires have often more than their proper share in determining the issue of the match. The professional supplements his income in other ways. He generally supplies bats and balls and other cricket materials, and sometimes, if he is a man of business, he establishes himself finally in a shop, more frequently in a public-house, and settles down for life. [Illustration: _MR. J. H. DARK._ _THE UMPIRE._ (_Proprietor of Lords_). (_Wm. Caldecourt_). _WM. HILLYER._ _WM. MARTINGELL._] [Illustration: _FULLER PILCH_, _Who was considered, till the days of Dr. W. G. Grace, the best Batsman that had ever appeared_.] The descriptions of the amateur and professional as given above are accurate enough, and many of us who can remember the former state of things probably think that, in comparing the epoch of 1860 to 1870 with that of 1892 to 1902, the condition of things was better, as far as the amateur is concerned, in the ‘sixties, and worse for the professional, and that now the position is exactly reversed. An amateur should be either one thing or the other, but nobody can say in these days what he is. The change has taken place gradually, and began from causes that sprang into existence perhaps thirty years ago, and these we will now try to explain.