THE VILLAGE CRICKET CLUB. 293 



it, which is, that it is always receiving alterations 

 and improvements ; and an old cricketer of the 

 Hambledon Club, who should rise from his grave 

 and attend one of the Monday matches at Lord's 

 Ground, would scarcely recognize the pastime 

 which had employed and delighted his youthful 

 days on the Hampshire Downs. Some few, very 

 few, relics of the old game still exist : one or two 

 bats are preserved by the curious, no more resem- 

 bling the modern, than an old match-lock does a 

 finished Manton ; and the Marylebone Club have 

 in their possession two pictures of the game as 

 played, perhaps, 7<> or 80 years ago, which are 

 not only exceedingly curious as to costume, but 

 serve also to mark the exact progress towards a 

 scientific character which the game had then made. 

 But to return to our village annals. 



' We also had our club : we could not indeed 

 boast of a Lilly white, or a Redgate, among our 

 bowlers ; nor had we batters equal to Fuller 

 Pilch, or Wenman ; we had no wicket-keeper with 

 a hawk's eye and tiger's paw, like Box, into 

 whose unerring clutches balls seem to run, as the 

 needle to a loadstone, or as a bird into the fasci- 

 nating jaws of the snake ; in short, we bore the 

 same comparison to the Marylebone Club, as the 

 performers of a small country theatre do, to the 

 Ellen Trees and Macreadys of the metropolis : 



