BanJcnqjtcy in Arcadia. 187 



years ago. The professional agitators are the lowest 

 scoundrels outside a certain place which is not usually 

 mentioned in polite society ; but you cannot, except when 

 life is threatened, put a Martini-Henry bullet through a 

 poor devil of an agricultural labourer who has been misled 

 by some cold-blooded outside body in London, who don't 

 know a cucumber from a vegetable-marrow, and whose sole 

 object is to fatten on strife. 



But there are things we do miss. The village cricket 

 match is one of these. The downfall of this old institution 

 is easily accounted for— because there are very few cricket 

 fields, as land is too valuable and people are too busy, and 

 the consumption of country produce in London since the 

 railway days is so great, that everything which can be made 

 to grow by scientific farming and otherwise must grow : 

 and the farmer has become a man of business who puts his 

 capital into the soil, and probably attends three markets a 

 week, whereas in days gone by he would only attend one. 

 The leisure is gone ; and as regards the young gentleman 

 class, their ideas are of a higher order now, and they belong 

 to some club within hail, and aspire to be matched against 

 the Zingari, or the Civil Service, or. Incogniti, or the 

 Garrison, and prefer a " dress cricket match," with crowds 

 of ladies, champagne, and a dance in the evening to the 

 sound of a military band, to the homely village match and 

 the half-crown dinner at the Cricketers. 



Then as regards our country races, where are they? 

 Numbered with the past pretty much. Take the Wye races, 

 for instance, on the punch-bowl course, between Canterbury 

 and Ashford. I remember them when they were very 

 insignificant races, attended by the farmers, the rural 

 population, and the officers from Canterbury. The stakes 

 were very small, and it was sometimes difficult to make a 

 field ; I don't suppose any bets above a sovereign were often 



