some 70_l._, and part or all of the money at the field-gate being willingly accorded for their services, much hospitality is exercised wherever they go. This tends to a healthy circulation of the life’s blood of cricket, vaccinating and inoculating every wondering rustic with the principles of the national game. Our soldiers, we said, by order of the Horse Guards, are provided with cricket-grounds adjoining their barracks; and all of her Majesty’s ships have bats and balls to astonish the cockroaches at sea, and the crabs and turtles ashore. Hence it has come to pass that, wherever her Majesty’s servants have “carried their victorious arms” and legs, wind and weather permitting, cricket has been played. Still the game is essentially Anglo-Saxon. Foreigners have rarely, very rarely, imitated us. The English settlers and residents everywhere play; but of no single cricket club have we ever heard dieted either with frogs, sour crout, or macaroni. But how remarkable that cricket is not naturalised in Ireland! the fact is very striking that it follows the course rather of ale than whiskey. Witness Kent, the land of hops, and the annual antagonists of “All England.” Secondly, Farnham, which, as we shall presently show, with its adjoining parishes, nurtured the finest of the old players, as well as the finest hops,--_cunabula Trojæ_, the infant school of cricketers. Witness also the Burton Clubs, assisted by our excellent friend next akin to bitter ale. Witness again Alton ale, on which old Beagley throve so well, and the Scotch ale of Edinburgh, on which John Sparkes, though commencing with the last generation, has carried on his instructions, in which we ourselves once rejoiced, into the middle of the present century. The mountain mists and “mountain dew” suit better with deer-stalking than with cricket: our game disdains the Dutch courage of ardent spirits. The brain must glow with Nature’s fire, and not depend upon a spirit lamp. _Mens sana in corpore sano_: feed the body, but do not cloud the mind. You, sir, with the hectic flush, the fire of your eyes burnt low in their sockets, with beak as sharp as a woodcock’s from living upon suction, with pallid face and shaky hand,--our game disdains such ghostlike votaries. Rise with the lark and scent the morning air, and drink from the bubbling rill, and then, when your veins are no longer fevered with alcohol, nor puffed with tobacco smoke,--when you have rectified your illicit spirits and clarified your unsettled judgment,--“come again and devour up my discourse.” And you, sir, with the figure of Falstaff and the nose of Bardolph,--not Christianly eating that you may live, but living that you may eat,--one of the _nati consumere fruges_, the devouring caterpillar and grub of human kind--our noble game has no sympathy with gluttony, still less with the habitual “diner out,” on whom outraged nature has taken vengeance, by emblazoning what was his face (_nimium