Of the history of the other form of the game, in which running with the ball is encouraged, but little need be said; for from Rugby School, and from Rugby School alone, what is now known as the Rugby Union game is derived. If the view we have taken in the foregoing pages be correct, while the running and collaring game was the original national sport of England, the dribbling game owes its origin to schools in which the playgrounds were limited in size, and where various considerations rendered the rough horseplay which characterized football in the ancient times impracticable. In the beginning of this chapter we have pointed out that the size of the Close at Rugby rendered it possible for the boys of that school to play the original game without fear of being hurled when collared against stone walls, or iron railings, or upon surfaces of gravel. Hence we should naturally expect to find, in the game practised at this school, an absence of any restriction in the way in which the ball was to be taken towards the adversaries’ goal, and an equal absence of any restriction in the means of collaring or stopping one of the attacking party in his course, and with no limits to the field of play except those which necessity demanded. It is the very style of game which is known to have been in vogue at Rugby fifty years ago. We need scarcely refer to the well-known description of the football match in “Tom Brown’s Schooldays at Rugby,” as that description is hardly likely to be unknown to any of our readers; but if any take the trouble to reperuse it after reading these pages, they can scarcely fail to notice how little the Rugby game described there differs from a Rugby Union “Big-side” at the present day. Indeed, until within the last few years the Rugby School game suffered no alteration; but lately the tripping, hacking, and indiscriminate charging have been abandoned, no doubt more in respect to the feelings of the numerous fifteens who visit the school to play matches, than from any assumed effeminacy of the hard-shinned Rugbeians. At the present day we believe the Rugby School fifteens, at any rate in their foreign matches, conform to the Rugby Union Code.