1st. _Meet the ball._ The bat must strike the ball, not the ball the bat. Even if you block, you can block hard, and the wrists may do a little; so, with a good player this rule admits of no exception. Young players must not think I recommend a flourish, but an exact movement of the bat at the latest possible instant. In playing back to a bail ball, a good player meets the ball, and plays it with a resolute movement of arm and wrist. Pilch is not caught in the attitude of what some call Hanging guard, letting the ball hit his bat dead, once in a season. 2dly. _With a full bat._ A good player has never less wood than 21 inches by 4¼ inches before his wicket as he plays the ball, a bad player has rarely more than a bat’s width alone. Remember the old rule, to keep the left shoulder over the ball, and left elbow well up. Good players must avoid doing this in excess; for, some play from leg to off, across the line of the ball, in their over care to keep the shoulder over it. Fix a bat by pegs in the ground, and try to bowl the wicket down, and you will perceive what an unpromising antagonist this simple rule creates. I like to see a bat, as the ball is coming, hang perpendicular as a pendulum from the player’s wrists. The best compliment ever paid me was this:--“Whether you play forward or back, hitting or stopping, the wicket is always covered to the full measure of your bat.” So said a friend well known in North Devon, whose effective bowling, combined with his name, has so often provoked the pun of “the falls of the _Clyde_.” 3dly. _As full a bat as the case admits_: you cannot present a full bat to any but a straight ball. A bat brought forward from the centre stump to a ball Off or to leg, must be minutely oblique and form an angle sufficient to make Off or On hits. Herein then consists the great excellence of batting, _in presenting the largest possible face of the bat to the ball_. While the bat is descending on the ball, the ball may rise or turn, to say nothing of the liability of the hand to miss, and then the good player has always half the width of his bat, besides its height, to cover the deviation; whereas, the cross player is far more likely to miss, from the least inaccuracy of hand and eye, or twist of the ball. And, would you bring a full bat even to a toss? Would you not cut it to the Off or hit across to the On? This question tries my rule very hard certainly; but though nothing less than a hit from a toss can satisfy a good player, still I have seen the most brilliant hitters, when a little out of practice, lose their wicket, or hit a catch from the edge of the bat, by this common custom of hitting across even to a toss or long hop. To hit tosses is good practice, requiring good time and quick wrist play. If you see a man play stiff, and “up in a heap,” a swift toss is worth trying. Bowlers should practise both toss and tice.