Cricket, we have shown, was originally classed among the games of the lower orders; so we find the yeomen infinitely superior to the gentlemen even before cricket had become by any means so much of a profession as it is now. Tom Walker, Beldham, John Wells, Fennex, Hammond, Robinson, Lambert, Sparkes, H. Bentley, Bennett, Freemantle, were the best professionals of the day. For it was seven or eight years later that Mr. E. H. Budd, and his unequal rival, Mr. Brand, and his sporting friend, Osbaldeston, as also that fine player, E. Parry, Esq., severally appeared; and later still, that Mr. Ward, Howard, Beagley, Thumwood, Caldecourt, Slater, Flavel, Ashby, Searle, and Saunders, successively showed every resource of bias bowling to shorten the scores, and of fine hitting to lengthen them. By the end of these twenty years, all these distinguished players had taught a game in which the batting beat the bowling. “Cricket,” said Mr. Ward, “unlike hunting, shooting, fishing, or even yachting, was a sport that lasted three days;” the wicket had been twice enlarged, once about 1814, and again in 1817; old Lord had tried his third, the present, ground; the Legs had taught the wisdom of playing rather for love than money; slow coaches had given way to fast, long whist to short; and ultimately Lambert, John Wells, Howard, and Powell, handed over the ball to Broadbridge and Lillywhite. Such is the scene, the characters, and the performance. “Matches in those days were more numerously attended than now,” said Mr. Ward: the old game was more attractive to spectators, because more busy, than the new. Tom Lord’s flag was the well known telegraph that brought him in from three to four thousand sixpences at a match. John Goldham, the octogenarian inspector of Billingsgate, has seen the Duke of York and his adversary, the Honourable Colonel Lennox, in the same game, and had the honour of playing with both, and the Prince Regent, too, in the White Conduit Fields, on which spot Mr. Goldham built his present house. For the Prince was a great lover of the game, and caused the “Prince’s Cricket Ground” to be formed at Brighton. The late Lord Barrymore, killed by the accidental discharge of a blunderbuss in his phaeton, was an enthusiastic cricketer. The Duke of Richmond, when Colonel Lennox, a nobleman whose life and spirits and genial generous nature made him beloved by all, exulted in this as in all athletic sports: the bite of a fox killed him. Then, as you drive through Russell Square, behold the statue of another patron, the noble-born and noble-minded Duke of Bedford; and in Dorset Square, the site of old Lord’s Ground, you may muse and fancy you see, where now is some “modest mansion,” the identical mark called the “Duke’s strike,” which long recorded a hit, 132 yards in the air, from the once famous bat of Alexander, late Duke of Hamilton. Great matches in those days, as in these, cost money. Six guineas if they won and four if they lost,