DEPORTMENT AND CRICKET.

THE old gentlemen—my contemporaries—who during the last few weeks have been deploring the deteriora- tion of the manners of youth have set my wits working against my will. I really would rather not trouble myself about their published plaints, except just to agree with them, and with all those who have gone before us, that Deportment is not so good as it was, and that we can see and foresee only progenient vitiosiarem. Every father has frequent occasion to tell every son, " Bear your body more seeming.." This led me in my youth to accumulate Manuals of Conduct, which have long served their purpose and left me in despair. Not piety, but curiosity, has led me to take them down in my nonage ; and a glance at two of them kindles in me also a desire to testify. For great is the company of the prophets. Ducdame, ducdame, all over fifty !

The main lines of predication and prediction were set out when my particular friend, born, like me, in the 'fifties, delivered himself on the subject of tenue in relation to cricket-matches and such. The collocation reminded me that in the year 1858 (the year in which one or other of us was born) a publishing firm, which grew with years to present greatness, produced a twenty-ninth edition of Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society, by one 'kyory6t, hints originally hinted and printed in 1836, but now revised (with additions) by a Lady of Rank ; and that Lord Chester- field in his day had something to say about cricket and minor moralities to the Mr Stanhope for whom his lordship was responsible. This is what my father was told in the 1858 book and in twenty-eight editions before that :— " Never affect the ruffianly style of dress, unless, as some excuse, you hold a brilliant position in Society ; . . . but if you have no such pretensions, let your costume be as unostenta- tious as possible, lest, people only remark that your dress is as coarse as your mind.'

" Ruffianly " must be construed as in 1836-58 ; and we young gentlemen of later generations at Oxford and Cam- bridge, with our amazing waistcoats and blazers, must be taken to have held a position in society brilliant enough to justify our love for violent colour effects in dress, and to have established us, as to our minds, at our own valuation.

But what, I wonder, does my old friend do with his hat when he goes out to dinner ? His father told him that

" Men of fashion invariably take their hate into the drawing- room, where they are left when people go to dinner, and whence they are removed by the servants and placed in the ante-room or vestibule."

Nor is he superior to the pleasures of tobacco ; but I am quite sure that he does not always smoke in decorous seclusion. Yet he was thus adjured :- " If you are so unfortunate as to have contracted the low habit of smoking, be careful to practise it under certain restrictions. . . . Smoking in the streets or in a theatre is only practised by shop-boys, pseudo-fashionables--and the swEr.a. Moe."

And when he has left his hat in the proper place, and sits at meat, he will surely remember what is expected of hint in the usages of the table :— " Do not pick your teeth much at table. [Much, in italics, is good.] Eat peas with a dessert spoon ; and curry also. Tarts and puddings are to be eaten with a spoon."

Curry ? Yes. But peas, tarts, and puddings ? In these days of four-pronged forks ? No. I will do as I like ; and so does my friend. Some years ago a Lady of Title fright- ened us both very much by denouncing in a printed book the use of even a silver knife in eating fish ; but the club which we affect upholds the custom ; and it is a very old club—indeed, so old that it is said that a member has been known to be dead in the Silent Writing Room for three days before anyone noticed him. It is hard to believe that my friend shares all the regrets of Ladies of Rank and Ladies of Title in respect of the decay of the customs of our liberal ancestors ; for, not so long ago, " If there be not any napkins, a man hag no alternative but to use the table-cloth . . . unless (as many do) he prefers his pocket-handkerchief."

" I cannot sing the old songs," nor can I dance the new dances. But will my old friend resolve my perplexities, as a Praiser of the Past, by arbitrating between what his great-grandfather was told in 1774? and his grandfather and father in 1836-58 ? Mr. Stanhope was given to understand that " In dancing the motion of the arms should be particularly attended to, as these decide a man's being genteel or otherwise, more than any other part of the body. If a man dances from the waist upwards, wears his hat well, and moves his head pro. perly, he dances well."

But my father, and my grandfather before him, were told :- "Dance quietly ; do not kick and caper about, nor sway your body to and fro. Dance only from the hip downwards, and lead the lady as lightly as you would tread a measure with a spirit of gossamer."

On the merits of the ballroom gymnastics performed by my children I dare express no opinion. Non ragioniam di lor. But, for a period at all events, I understand that the models supplied by Liberia and Sierra Leone combined and confused all the motions condemned in 1774 as well as in 1836 and 1858. But I never stay later in the ballroom than midnight. I have, however, almost forgotten the subject of games, which was very much in my mind when I sat down to ruminate with my old friend on our lost youth and the times before. I know he plays golf, and I know he abets the Daily Press in its inordinate devotion to professional sports, and that he even takes his daughters for a round on the links as well as (top-hatted himself and otherwise pleno ficti) to Lord's. But he has conveniently forgotten the paternal warning :- " Mailing the sports of the .field the topics of conversation in female society will subject a man to the imputation of having a very mauvaie ton."

Nor will the top-hat and the morning-coat be a sufficient excuse for him when he compares notes hereafter in fields Elysian with his fellow-censor, Lord Chesterfield, who says :— " A gentleman always attends even to the choice of his amuse- ments. If at cards, he will not play at cribbage, all-fours, or putt ; or, in sports of exercise, be seen at skittles, football, leap-frog, oricket, driving of coaches, &c., for he knows that such an imitation of the manners of the mob will indelibly stamp him with vulgarity."

Be seen at it, mind I Not even if (like our grandfathers) he plays in a top-hat. But the more things change, the more they are the same. The wheel sometimes comes full circle. You may say what you like about the world standing still ; e pur si rnuove, if only to its former position. We are back again at the Twopenny Post, and people still grudge their tuppences :— " Do nat abuse the advantage of a twopenny post' by making people pay the postage of letters on your own business merely, and transmitted through such a channel entirely for your convenience, by saving the trouble of sending a servant. . . . Depend upon it, the most tiffy ' people will not be very much offended at the postage being paid."

It is true. They will not.

Let me conclude with an excerpt from 'A-yary4r, which will convey almost as many morals as you like :— " An unfortunate Clerk of the Treasury, who, because he was in receipt of a good salary, besides being a triton amongst the minnows' . . . fancied himself a great man, dined at the B—f S—k Club, where he sat next to a noble Duke, who, desirous of putting him at ease with himself, conversed freely with him, yet probably forgot even the existence of such a person half an hour afterwards. Meeting his Grace in the street some days after, and encouraged by his previous condescension, the hero of the quill, bent on claiming his acquaintance, accosted him in a familiar hail-fellow-well-met-ish ' manner= AIL, my Lord, how d'ye do ? ' The Duke looked surprised. May I know, sir, to whom I have the honour of speaking ? ' said his Grace, drawing up. ' Oh ! why—don't you know ? We dined together at the B. S. Club the other evening I'm Mr. Timms of the Treasury " Then,' said the Duke, turning on his heel, Mr. Timms of the Treasury, I wish you a good morning.' " Now, this enables a poor, ordinary Civil servant (eccomi !), a minnow, to point out that the Treasury, even in 1836-58 (through twenty-eight editions), looked very carefully after itself in respect of emoluments, and had acquired, even in the world's infancy, its famous tritonian " manner " (cruelly likened by a sufferer to the manner of " gilded butlers ") ; and to note that dukes of those days gave themselves airs which in later times descended to lower ranks of the nobility ; and to remark that there is not much to choose between the bad manners of bounders, be they marquesses or " heroes of the quill," in any age.

UMBRATICUS.