186 THE COMPLETE SPORTSMAN 



spoken than by the Iron Duke when he said that 

 the Battle of Waterloo was won upon the play- 

 ing-fields at Eton; the memory of this immortal 

 epigram still sends a thrill through the breast of 

 every true Englishman, unless, of course, he 

 happens to have been privately educated in 

 a clergyman's family at Wigan. Patience, 

 chivalry, perseverance, all our national virtues 

 are to a great extent the fruit of early training 

 on the cricket ground. To it we owe the dogged 

 determination, the fearless courage, which ex- 

 press themselves to-day in that square, resolute 

 jaw that Britons have inherited from a long 

 succession of cricketing ancestors; indeed, we 

 may justly affirm that it is largely due to village 

 cricket that, as the Psalmist so felicitously puts 

 it, the chins of the fathers are visited upon the 

 children, unto the third and fourth generation. 



