The following pages are devoted to the history and the science of our National Game. Isaac Walton has added a charm to the Rod and Line; Col. Hawker to the Dog and the Gun; and Nimrod and Harry Hieover to the “Hunting Field:” but, the “Cricket Field” is to this day untrodden ground. We have been long expecting to hear of some chronicler aided and abetted by the noblemen and gentlemen of the Marylebone Club,--one who should combine, with all the resources of a ready writer, traditionary lore and practical experience. But, time is fast thinning the ranks of the veterans. Lord Frederick Beauclerk and the once celebrated player, the Hon. Henry Tufton, afterwards Earl of Thanet, have passed away; and probably Sparkes, of the Edinburgh Ground, and Mr. John Goldham, hereinafter mentioned, are the only surviving players who have witnessed both the formation and the jubilee of the Marylebone Club--following, as it has, the fortunes of the Pavilion and of the enterprising Thomas Lord, literally through “three removes” and “one fire,” from White Conduit Fields to the present Lord’s. How, then, it will be asked, do _we_ presume to save from oblivion the records of Cricket? As regards the Antiquities of the game, our history is the result of patient researches in old English literature. As regards its changes and chances and the players of olden time, it fortunately happens that, some fifteen years ago, we furnished ourselves with old Nyren’s account of the Cricketers of his time and the Hambledon Club, and, using Bentley’s Book of Matches from 1786 to 1825 to suggest questions and test the truth of answers, we passed many an interesting hour in Hampshire and Surrey, by the peat fires of those villages which reared the Walkers, David Harris, Beldham, Wells, and some others of the All England players of fifty years since. Bennett, Harry Hampton, Beldham, and Sparkes, who first taught us to play,--all men of the last century,--have at various times contributed to our earlier annals; while Thomas Beagley, for some days our landlord, the late Mr. Ward, and especially Mr. E. H. Budd, often our antagonist in Lansdown matches, have respectively assisted in the first twenty years of the present century.