Howe in Westmoreland, in the beautiful lake
region of the northwest of England.

CRICKET-MATCHES.

The Wellesburn match was played out with great success yesterday, the
School winning by three wickets;[7] and to-day the great event of the
cricketing year, the Marylebone match, is being played. What a match
it has been! The London eleven came down by an afternoon train
yesterday, in time to see the end of the Wellesburn match; and as soon
as it was over, their leading men and umpire inspected the ground,
criticising it rather unmercifully. The captain of the School eleven,
and one or two others, who had played the Lord's match before, and
knew old Mr. Aislabie and several of the Lord's men, accompanied them;
while the rest of the eleven looked on from under the Three Trees with
admiring eyes, and asked one another the names of the illustrious
strangers, and recounted how many runs each of them had made in the
late matches in _Bell's Life_. They looked such hard-bitten,[8] wiry,
whiskered fellows, that their young adversaries felt rather desponding
as to the result of the morrow's match. The ground was at last chosen,
and two men set to work to water and roll it; and then, there being
yet some half-hour of daylight, some one had suggested a dance on the
turf. The close was half full of citizens and their families, and the
idea was hailed with enthusiasm. The cornopean-player was still on the
ground; in five minutes the eleven, and half a dozen of the Wellesburn
and Marylebone men got partners somehow or another, and a merry
country dance was going on, to which every one flocked, and new
couples joined in every minute, till there were a hundred of them
going down the middle and up again--and the long line of
school-buildings looked gravely down on them, every window glowing
with the last rays of the western sun, and the rooks clanged about in
the tops of the old elms, greatly excited, and resolved on having
their country dance, too, and the great flag flapped lazily in the
gentle western breeze. Altogether it was a sight which would have made
glad the heart of our brave old founder, Lawrence Sheriff,[9] if he
were half as good a fellow as I take him to have been. It was a
cheerful sight to see, but what made it so valuable in the sight of
the captain of the School eleven was, that he saw there his young
hands shaking off their shyness and awe of the Lord's men, as they
crossed hands and capered about on the grass t