But that we were savages, who, looking back on those bygone times, can doubt? _Non angeli, sed Angli._ “It was an era,” as Mr. Ralph Nevill has well remarked in his _Floreat Etona_, “when the sickening cant of humanitarianism, born of luxury and weakness, had not yet arisen, to emasculate and enfeeble the British race.” The hunting and breaking up of hares then, as now, was one of the recognized pastimes; indeed, even as late as the headmastership of Dr. Balston (1857-68), it had been permitted to the boys, as a variation from the hare-hunt, to pursue with beagles a mutilated fox deprived of one of his pads.[5] In the hundreds of sermons which I have heard preached in Eton College Chapel, never was a word spoken on the subject of cruelty. And no wonder; for Eton had always been a home of cruel sports. There was the less excuse for these miserable practices, because an abundance and superabundance of the nobler sports was within reach of the Eton boy: nowhere else could river and playing-field offer such attractions. Thrilling beyond all else, and crowning the glories of the summer school-time, was the great annual cricket match between Eton and Harrow at “Lord’s,” a drama of such excitement as nothing in mature life could ever equal. Who, for example, that witnessed the match of 1869--C. J. Ottaway’s year, when Eton broke a long series of defeats by a single-innings victory--can have forgotten the delirious scene at the close? I can still see Dr. Goodford, the venerable Provost of Eton, dancing ecstatically, hat in hand, before the pavilion, and looking very much as “Spy” once pictured him in a famous cartoon in _Vanity Fair_.