202 JULY. 



and happiness within their reach. Many of the sports 

 and pastimes of our forefathers, are, in the retro- 

 spect, picturesque and pleasant but attempt to prac- 

 tise them at the present day, and the very villagers 

 would laugh at them as ridiculous child's play, and 

 in fact they are child's play. They were the amuse- 

 ments of a generation children in intellectual cul- 

 ture, though of brawny growth in body ; they were 

 the pastimes of beings, whom, in the race of real 

 knowledge, our very clowns have left behind. Nay 

 I question whether our peasantry could witness, 

 without an internal feeling of contempt, what were 

 at one day the highest entertainments of the highest 

 classes at which " lords and dukes and noble cap- 

 tains" toiled day after day, and the proudest and 

 brightest dames sate witnesses, not in impatience, 

 but in pleasure. In vain then do we lament our 

 Christmas sports, and the old games of gentle and 

 simple : they are pleasant pictures in pleasant as- 

 sociations; they are highly to be valued as relics 

 and remembrances of the olden time of the good 

 olden time good to the good people who enjoyed 

 them good possibly in themselves exceedingly 

 good at a distance ; but 



Another race has been, and other palms are won. 



Knowledge has run to and fro in the earth. It has 

 penetrated into the remotest hamlet into the ob- 

 scurest nook, not, indeed, in the degree which it 

 ought, for the benefit and happiness of all parties, 

 and in which I trust it yet will, but it has penetrated 



