eet on equal terms, the zest of the game
outweighing the prejudice of caste. The government encourages it as a
physical discipline for the troops, and provides all barracks with
cricket-grounds. Every regiment has its club, and, what is odd, the navy
furnishes many crack players. It is the favorite _par excellence_ at all
schools, colleges and universities; every county, every town and every
village has its local club; while the I Zingari and its host of rivals
serve to focus the ubiquitous talent of All England. The public enjoy
it, merely as spectators, to such a degree that a grand match-day at
Lord's is only second in point of enthusiasm to the Derby Day. Special
trains carry thousands, and the field presents a gay picture framed in a
quadrangle of equipages. It is sometimes difficult, even by charging
large admission-fees, to keep the number of spectators within convenient
limits. Notwithstanding the motley assemblage which a match always
attracts, so unobjectionable are the associations of the cricket-field
that clergymen do not feel it unbecoming to participate in the
diversion, either as players, umpires or spectators.

In this country, while cricket is known in a few localities, it has
never been generally adopted. In New York a few English residents have
for years formed the nucleus of a somewhat numerous fraternity, and the
announcement that an _American Cricketer's Manual_ will be published in
that city during the present season indicates that home interest in the
sport is on the increase. But the chief thriving-place of native
American cricket is conceded to be Philadelphia, and it will be
interesting, perhaps, to take a retrospect of the progress of the game
in this city.

Tradition carries us back as far as the year 1831 or 1832, when cricket
was first played on the ground of George Ticknor, Esq., west of the old
bridge below Fairmount, by a few Englishmen, who shortly afterward
organized themselves under the name of the Union Club. Some of our older
native cricketers remember taking their first lessons from the three
brothers, George, Prior and John Ticknor, who, with Joseph Nicholls,
William Richardson, John M. Fisher, John Herrod, George Parker, Samuel
Dingworth, Jonathan Ainsworth, John Kenworthy and George Daffin, met on
Saturday afternoons and holidays. In subsequent years a few enthusiastic
spirits practiced with home-made bats on the Camden common, and thence
we trace the feeble but growing inter