And, after all, the fight did not coma off in
Wiltshire. The police interrupted the first round at Wootton Bassett, and the discomfited combatants and their backers returned to London and went down to Purfieet, where they crossed the river to Long Reach, leaving the Essex police watching them on the other side. Here the fight took place, and lasted an hour and forty minutes, Goss adopting a harassing system of feints, which was very loftily condemned by Mace's admirers under the name of " squirming." At last, Goss was felled and rendered insensible by a heavy blow—" a thousand-pounder in two senses," said the delighted Maceites, and Mace wus kissed by his backers. We scarcely know which of the two cham- pions' fate would have seemed to us the most heavy "punish- ment"—to be rendered insensible by a blow, or to be insensible to such caresses. The prize-ring is rarely maudlin,—the high stakes this time must have inebriated its imagination,— but when backers get to kissing the victorious brawn and muscle, even the Saturday Review will withdraw its powerful support, which was given, we think, on the hypo- thesis that prize-fighting discourages tenderness of, heart.
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