In one word, there is no game in which amiability and an unruffled temper is so essential to success, or in which virtue is rewarded, half as much as in the game of cricket. Dishonest or shuffling ways cannot prosper; the umpires will foil every such attempt--those truly constitutional judges, bound by a code of written laws--and the public opinion of a cricket club, militates against his preferment. For cricket is a social game. Could a cricketer play a solo, or with a dummy (other than the catapult), he might play in humour or out of humour; but an Eleven is of the nature of those commonwealths of which Cicero said that, without some regard to the cardinal virtues, they could not possibly hold together. Such a national game as cricket will both humanise and harmonise the people. It teaches a love of order, discipline, and fair play for the pure honour and glory of victory. The cricketer is a member of a wide fraternity: if he is the best man in his club, and that club is the best club in the county, he has the satisfaction of knowing his high position, and may aspire to represent some large and powerful constituency at Lord’s. How spirit-stirring are the gatherings of rival counties! And I envy not the heart that glows not with delight at eliciting the sympathies of exulting thousands, when all the country is thronging to its battle-field studded with flags and tents. Its very look makes the heart beat for the fortune of the play; and for miles around the old coachman waves his whip above his head with an air of infinite importance if he can only be the herald of the joyous tidings, “We’ve won the day.” Games of some kind men must have, and it is no small praise of cricket that it occupies the place of less innocent sports. Drinking, gambling, and cudgel-playing, insensibly disappear as you encourage a manly recreation which draws the labourer from the dark haunts of vice and misery to the open common, where “The squire or parson o’ the parish, Or the attorney,”