proof of the practical identity of the games than otherwise, for it is quite clearly proved that wickets are a very recent addition to cricket, and that, as we shall see, in the infancy of the game the batsman stood before a circular hole in the turf, and was put out, as in "rounders," by being caught, or by the ball being put into this hole. A century and a half ago this hole was still in use, though it had on each side a stump only one foot high, with a long cross-bar of two feet in length laid on the top of them what Mr. Frederick Gale calls a "skeleton hurdle of about two feet wide and one foot high."

An old game, called "handyn and handoute," is supposed to have been another form of what was destined to develop into the scientific cricket of modern times; but the only authority for this conjecture appears to be contained in this extract from Daines Barrington's "Observations on the more Ancient Statutes," when commenting on King Edward IV.'s law against unlawful games, in 1477:-"The disciplined soldiers were not only guilty of pilfering on their return, but also of the vice of gaming. The third chapter therefore forbids playing at cloish, ragle, half-bowle, queke-borde, handyn and handoute. Whosoever shall permit these games to be played in their house or yard is punishable with three years' imprisonment: those who play at any of the said games are to be fined £10, or lie in jail two years. This is the most severe law ever made in any country against gaming; and some of those forbidden seem to have been manly exercises, particularly the 'handyn and handoute,' which I should suppose to be a kind of cricket, as the term 'hands' is still (1766) retained in that game." This is meagre evidence enough to connect this prohibited pastime with cricket, but nothing more seems to be known about it.

Strutt makes no attempt to describe this game, but merely notes that it was spoken of as a new game, and forbidden by King Edward's severe statute.

Even though we have to give up the case of handyn and

handoute for lack of evidence, we find ample amends when we turn to the next of our progenitors of cricket, the merry old game of stool-ball, in which lads and lasses used to join on their village greens in the "good olden time," and which still exists in some of the southern counties as a special game for

women.

Its season seems to have been very much that of cricket nowadays, though perhaps it was more especially a game for spring and early summer: thus, in Poor Robin's Almanac for 1677, in the observations on April, we find against Easter Monday and Tuesday a note that

Young men and maids,

Now very brisk,

At barley-break and
Stool-ball frisk;

while in the same almanac for 1740 we are told that when the merry month of May has come,

Much time is wasted now away

At pigeon-holes and nine-pin play;

Whilst hob-nailed Dick and simpering Frances
Trip it away in country dances;

At stool-ball and at barley-break,

Wherewith they harmless pastime make.

It was a common thing for the lads and lasses to play at stool-ball during the Easter holidays for tansy cakes, a prize which Selden, in his "Table Talk," conceives to have originated from the Jewish custom of eating bitter herbs at the time of the Passover. Among the many writers of the last two centuries who allude to stool-ball, several notice this custom, as Herrick does in these lines from his "Hesperides":

At stool-ball, Lucia, let us play,
For sugar-cakes and wine;
Or for a tansie let us pay,

The losse be thine or mine.

If thou, my deere, a winner be
At trundling of the ball,

The wager thou shalt have, and me,

And my misfortunes all.

This custom, however, does not appear to have been confined to Easter-tide, or, at any rate, this pleasant little fillip to flagging interest was soon extended to summer games, for in Tom D'Urfey's play of "The Comical History of Don Quixote," acted at Dorset Gardens in 1694, occur these lines :

Down in a vale, on a summer's day,

All the lads and lasses met to be merry;

A match for kisses at stool-ball to play,

And for cakes and ale, and cider and perry.

Chorus. Come all, great, small, short, tall, away to stool-ball.

Though the frequent allusions to stool-ball in the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries testify to its great popularity among the lower orders, we might have been at a loss to know how it was played if it were not that it still is played in Sussex, and that local tradition seems to have preserved the old rules of the game. Dr. Johnson, indeed, tells us, in his dictionary, that it was a game where balls were driven from stool to stool, but he contents himself with this meagre definition, and does not go any deeper into the mysteries of stool-ball. Strutt never saw the game played, though he tells us that he was informed "that a pastime called stool-ball is practised to this day in the northern parts of England, which consists in simply setting a stool upon the ground, and one of the players takes his place before it, while his antagonist, standing at a distance, tosses a ball with the intention of striking the stool; and this it is the business of the former to prevent by beating it away with the hand, reckoning one to the game for every stroke of the ball; if, on the contrary, it should be missed by the hand, and touch the stool, the players change places." Strutt's stool-ball, however, is rather "rounders" than cricket, for he goes on to say that sometimes

a certain number of stools are set up in a circular form, and at a distance from each other, and that at each stroke of the ball the players stationed at the stools must run in succession from stool to stool, being put out if hit by the ball or caught out.

The real stool-ball, however, was and is a double-wicket game, in which the players used a kind of bat, and defended wickets, which, perhaps, originally were stools, but afterwards became two boards about a foot square, fixed on short poles from three to four feet high, according to the age of the players, and about thirteen yards from each other. Balls were bowled, runs scored, and catches made, just as in cricket. The players usually numbered from eight to eleven on each side, and the fields were placed as nearly as possible as they are in cricket. From the height of the wicket-boards, balls had necessarily to be bowled full pitch, and the striker was out if the board was hit or the ball caught.

This cheerful and exciting game appears to have been played chiefly in Sussex, and there only by the female sex. In the Sussex villages, some years ago, it was to girls what cricket is to boys. "Women's cricket," says a writer in Notes and Queries, "was played in almost every village of the county." It was a favourite game at fairs; at school feasts the clergymen's families and the gentry joined the girls in the game. Matches, too, were played by the ladies of one parish against those of another. The advent of croquet, however, seems to have lessened the interest taken in it then, but it is now being revived in Sussex, the initiative being taken by a ladies' club, composed of members of the principal county families near Horsham. As it is a lively and exciting game, it is surprising that it has not been taken up in other places; if it were, it would very probably run lawn-tennis hard for the pride of place once occupied by the deposed croquet.

In the Graphic for October 12, 1878, there is a spirited illustration of a match at stool-ball played at Horsham Park that autumn, between two county clubs of young ladies-the

Foresters and the Horsham Park Eleven. From the accompanying description we learn that the Foresters made 109 runs. in their first innings, and 136 in their second, while their fielding and bowling were so exceedingly good that their opponents were put out for sixty runs in their first and sixteen in their second innings. The bats used were small wooden instruments, like a battledore or racket, only with rather shorter handles, while the ball was a full-sized tennis. Balls had to be bowled underhand and full pitch.

A large gathering of the neighbouring gentry assembled to witness the match, which excited the greatest interest. "The two elevens were dressed in picturesque uniforms of light blue and pink, and the beautiful grounds adjoining the house were gaily decorated with flags. The whole formed a most striking scene." With such allurements the great chances are that not a few recreant cricketers may find the parent more enjoyable than the child, may desert cricket, and, like Richard in Shadwell's "Woman Captain," resolve that for the future they "will play at stool-ball with the maids."

Certain correspondents of Notes and Queries, some time ago were disposed to hold that the obsolete game of stob-ball was another variety of the principle of cricket. Very little is known about this old game, but from the glimpses we do get of it in old authors it seems to have been akin to golf rather than to cricket. There are two allusions to it in the Berkeley MSS. (1618), published by Mr. T. D. Fosbrooke in 1821, one in which the writer only records that the "Earl of Leicester, with an extraordinary number of attendants, and multitudes of country people that resorted to him, came to Wotton, and thence to Michaelwood Lodge, casting downe part of the pales which, like a little parke, then enclosed that lodge, and thence went to Wotton Hill, where hee played a match at stoball;" while, in the other, the writer most tantalisingly refrains from describing the game, on the plea that it is so well known. "The large and levell playnes of Slimbridge, Warth, and others,