that there are no fights at Eton any more because the boys ‘funk each other.’ Eton boys funk each other! But we need not believe it. Let there be no nonsense listened to about brutality. The world belongs to the men who can fight. There were, besides the street fights, which kept things lively and gave animation to the dullest parts of the town, many other things which we see no longer. The bear who danced: the bull who was baited: the pigeons which were shot in Battersea Fields: the badger which was drawn: the dogs which were fought: the rats which were killed: the cocks which were fought: the cats which were thrown into the ponds: the ducks which were hunted--these amusements exist no longer; fifty years ago they afforded sport for many. Hunting, coursing, horse-racing, shooting, went on bravely. As regards game preserves, the laws were more rigidly enforced, and there was a much more bitter feeling towards them on the part of farmers then than now. On the other hand, there were no such wholesale battues; sport involved uncertainty; gentlemen did not sell their game; rabbits, instead of being sent off to the nearest poulterer, were given to the labourers as they should be. The sporting instincts of the Londoner gave the comic person an endless theme for fun. He was always hiring a horse and coming to grief; he was perpetually tumbling off, losing his stirrups, letting his whip fall, having his hat blown off and carried away, and generally disgracing himself in the eyes of those with whom he wished to appear to the best advantage. There was the Epping Hunt on Easter Monday, where the sporting Londoners turned out in thousands; there were the ponies on hire at any open place all round London--at Clapham Common, Blackheath, Hampstead, Epping. To ride was the young Londoner’s greatest ambition: even to this day there is not one young man in ten who will own without a blush that he cannot ride. To ride in the Park was impossible for him, because he had to be at his desk at ten; a man who rides in the Park is independent of the City; but there were occasions on which everyone would long to be able to sit in the saddle. Rowing, athletics, and, above all, the cycle, have done much to counterbalance the attractions of the saddle. [Illustration: COCKNEY SPORTSMEN] It seems certain, unless the comic papers all lie, that fifty years ago every young man also wanted to go shooting. Remember how Mr. Winkle--an arrant Cockney, though represented as coming from Bristol--not only pretended to love the sport, but always went about attired as one ready to take the field. The Londoner went out into the fields, which then lay within his reach all round the City, popping at everything. Let us illustrate the subject with the following description of a First of September taken from the ‘Comic Almanack’ of 1837. Perhaps Thackeray wrote it:--