The great and supreme art of batting constitutes to the large majority of cricketers the most enjoyable part of the game. There are three especially delightful moments in life connected with games, and only those who have experienced all three can realise what these moments are. They are (1) the cut stroke at tennis, when the striker wins chase one and two on the floor; (2) the successful drive at golf, when the globe is despatched on a journey of 180 yards; (3) a crack to square-leg off a half-volley just outside the legs. When once the sensation has been realised by any happy mortal, he is almost entitled to chant in a minor key a ‘Nunc Dimittis,’ to feel that the supreme moment has come, and that he has not lived in vain. After what has been said in the foregoing chapter we shall here only touch upon the cricket of the past in so far as seems necessary to make this dissertation on batting tolerably complete, and shall then proceed to discuss the principles and science of the art as it now exists. The shape of the bat in the year 1746--which may be taken as a beginning, for it was in that year that the first score of a match was printed and handed down to posterity, at any rate in Lillywhite’s ‘Scores and Biographies’--resembled a thick crooked stick more than a modern bat. From the shape of the bat, obviously adapted to meet the ball when moving along the ground, one may infer that the bowlers habitually delivered a style of ball we now call a ‘sneak.’ How long this system of bowling remained in vogue cannot exactly be told. The famous William Beldham, who was born in 1766, and lived for nearly one hundred years, is reported by Nyren to have said that when he was a boy nearly all bowling was fast and along the ground. As long as this was the case it is probable that the bat was nothing but a club, for if the ball never left the ground the operative part of the bat would naturally be at the very bottom, as is usual in clubs. The renowned Tom Walker was the earliest lob bowler; he probably took to the style late in life, or about the year 1800, and several bowlers, notably the great E. H. Budd, raised the arm slightly; but it is believed that the first genuine round-arm bowlers were William Lillywhite and James Broadbridge, both of Sussex, who first bowled the new style in 1827. That year was from this cause a year of revolution in cricket, and the shape of the modern bat dates from that period. As a rule, up to the year 1800 the style of batting was back. William Fennex is supposed to have been the inventor of forward play, and Beldham reports a saying of one Squire Paulett, who was watching Fennex play: ‘You do frighten me there, jumping out of your ground.’ The great batsmen of the early era of cricket were Lord Frederick Beauclerk, Mr. Budd, Beldham, Bentley, Osbaldeston, William Ward, Beagley, William Lambert, Jem Broadbridge, W. Hooker, Saunders, and Searle. The great skill of these players, when opposed to