But by this wise provision of nature, simultaneously with the crowding into towns (a feature, by the way, not of decadent but of increasing national energy, and inevitable to successful competition), came this new feature, the rise of athleticism, and the desire and necessity for the health which athleticism both demands and, on the other hand, brings with it. It is requisite, in order to excel at any game which demands fleetness of foot, quickness of movement, accuracy of eye, to live, broadly speaking, in a sober and rational manner. Drunken meteors have reeled and will reel again over the athletic heavens, men who are built in such iron mould that excess appears not to interfere with their excellence, but on the one hand their brilliance is but short-lived, and on the other they are in themselves exceptional; for we may say that the average scratch player at golf, for instance, will certainly not remain on that desirable mark for six months if he drinks a bottle of port every night, and empties his box of cigarettes in two days. Thus athleticism, on the whole, encourages among its million votaries a more sensible and moderate way of life than they would, but for it, have enjoyed, and by it they now, and their children in the future, will inevitably be the fitter citizens. The green fields of England are depopulated it is true, and a thicker and ever-spreading pall of smoke rises above the clanking manufacturing towns and fog-ridden skies under which the cities hum like swarming hives; but how on Saturday afternoons are the fields populated again, and how the sand-pits crumble under the illiterate strokes of delving stockbrokers, to whom at the moment the little half-hidden ball is of more importance than the miles and millions of the Rand or the salvation of their souls!