The rage for athletic exercises, which has spread like wildfire over England, has made some feeble and unsuccessful efforts to lay hold of the mind of Young America. It is quite in harmony with the English love of field sports and outdoor games, but not at all with the habits and predilections of Americans. Their climate, which covers the ground with snow in winter, and is so hot in summer, may be unadapted to, and therefore indispose them for these things. But I believe the chief cause is in their indoor pursuits, which engross so much of their time and thoughts, and in the almost total absence among them of a class possessed of leisure, which from the times of the barons to the present day has always been a large and constantly increasing class amongst us. Billiards appear to have taken very much the place in America which field sports and athletic exercises occupy here. The large billiard rooms of their large hotels are of an evening always full of players and spectators. The American tables have no pockets, except in the four corners. At the hotel at which I stayed while at New York, I saw a man who played his game without cue or mace, merely spinning his ball between his thumb and middle finger. He had attained to such skill in doing this, that he appeared to be able to send the ball just to any point he pleased, with the greatest ease and certainty. I suppose, like Blondin, he had made a single muscular feat the work of his life. I saw billiard tables set up in wooden shanties on the plains of the North Platte, and beyond the plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.