Modern English Sports. By Frederick Gale. (Sampson Low and Co.)—Mr.
Gale always writes pleasantly, and with a certain amount of knowledge, whatever the subject he may be engaged with; but it is evident that cricket is his forte. Cricket, it is clear, he knows as a man who has played the game himself, and has watched it also for a good many. years. We are inclined, indeed, to wish that he had given more of his space to this topic, and retrenched some of the per- functory notices which he gives to other games. We should like to have heard more, for instance, of the phenomenally fast bowler, William Marcon, an Etonian, whose speed was so great that "only a streak of red was to be seen." What were his performances ? Did he take many wickets ? Or was he so fast that he had to be taken off lest he should ruin his own side in "byes," a thing which the present writer remembers to have seen long ago in one of the University matches. But the non-cricket chapters are also worth reading ; not the least of Mr. Gale's merit is his healthy abhorrence of all the money-getting, selfish practices that in one way or another are always working injury to honest sport. Among other evil-doings he condemns with earnestness the greediness with which some of the nouveaux riches shut the public, out of places which they have enjoyed from time immemorial ; and he has a peculiarly righteous indignation against the race of keepers. On one point in the chapter on angling we may venture to correct him. It is not necessary that
a fish should be killed by ; nine fishermen out of ten use snap-tackle.
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