nd all other
matters necessary for the satisfactory carrying out of the festivities;
and warned them as to keeping all spirituous liquors out of the close,
and having the gates closed by nine o'clock.

The Wellesburn match was played out with great success yesterday, the
School winning by three wickets; 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, 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 upon it to water and roll; 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, 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 there saw his young hands shaking off
their