RUNS. RUNS. Lord Sackville 5 c by Waymark 3 b by Harris. Long Robin 7 b Newland 9 b Newland. Mills 0 b Harris 6 c Ditto. Hadswell 0 b Ditto 5 -- not out. Cutbush 3 c Green 7 -- not out. Bartrum 2 b Newland 0 b Newland. Danes 6 b Ditto 0 c Smith. Sawyer 0 c Waymark 5 b Newland. Kips 12 b Harris 10 b Harris. Mills 7 -- not out 2 b Newland. Romney 11 b Harris 8 c Harris. Byes 0 Byes 3 -- -- 53 58 Cricket was introduced into Eton early in the last century. Horace Walpole was sent to Eton in the year 1726. Playing cricket, as well as thrashing bargemen, was common at that time. For in Walpole’s Letters, vol. i. p. 4., he says,-- “I can’t say I am sorry I was never quite a school-boy; an expedition against bargemen, or _a match at cricket_, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty.” The fourth Earl of Carlisle learnt cricket at Eton at the same time. The Earl writes to George Selwyn, even from Manheim, that he was up, playing at cricket, before Selwyn was out of his bed. And now, the oldest chronicler is Old Nyren, who wrote an account of the cricketers of his time. The said Old Nyren borrowed the pen of our kind friend Charles Cowden Clarke, to whom John Keats dedicated an epistle, and who rejoiced in the friendship of Charles Lamb; and none but a spirit akin to Elia could have written like “Old Nyren.” Nyren was a fine old English yeomen, whose chivalry was cricket; and Mr. Clarke has faithfully recorded his vivid descriptions and animated recollections. And, with this charming little volume in hand, and inkhorn at my button, in 1837 I made a tour among the cottages of William Beldham, and the few surviving worthies of the same generation; and, having also the advantage of a MS. by the Rev. John Mitford, taken from many a winter’s evening with Old Fennex, I am happy to attempt the best account that the lapse of time admits, of cricket in the olden time. From a MS. my friend received from the late Mr. William Ward, it appears that the wickets were placed twenty-two yards apart as long since as the year 1700; that stumps were then only one foot high, but two feet wide. The width some persons have doubted; but it is rendered credible by the auxiliary evidence that there was, in those days, width enough between the two stumps for cutting the wide blockhole already mentioned, and also because--whereas now we hear of stumps and bails--we read formerly of “two stumps with one stump laid across.”