when Jem Mace, the pugilist, said he would rather stand up for ten rounds than keep wicket on that pitch. Grace had no pet stroke as other batsmen had. He was master of every stroke, and used the one best suited to the ball he was playing. He may not have had the wrist shots of Trumper, nor the elegance of Spooner, but he was more completely equipped with every conceivable means of baffling the bowler than any other cricketer who ever played. Ranjitsinhji has been compared to him; but the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar told the present writer that he only began where 'W. G.' left off, and he never batted on those baffling wickets on which the elder player made his reputation. A contribution of twenty on them was worth eighty made under modern conditions; yet Grace averaged fifty-nine runs per innings during his first ten seasons.

No one else ever played the game with quite so much care. Other men went to the nets just to open their shoulders; Grace always batted there with the same thoroughness as if he were in the critical part of a match. Richard Daft considered that the two secrets of 'W. G.'s' success were his self-denial and his constant practice. Another point was his ability to come quickly to a decision. Only a very slow bowler ever found him in two minds. Watching the ball with absolute concentration, he instinctively settled how it should be played and then played it hard in the way he wished. It was not only what he did but how he did it, which made his batting so profoundly interesting to watch. His timing was admittedly perfect. So was his placing, which he himself attributed to playing so much against twenty-two's for the All England Eleven, though old men tell me he possessed this quality from the very outset of his career. 'He was strictly orthodox in his batting, improving and standardising (so to speak) the strokes of George Parr, Tom Hayward the elder, and Robert Carpenter.' There were great cricketers before W. G. Grace, and no doubt there will be others after him; but it was he who took the old-time game and by his surpassing prowess made it spectacular, therefore more widely popular, and personally caused most of the various developments which have crystallised into what is now known as first-class cricket. So far back as 1871,

it was seriously proposed to alter the laws of cricket on his account, so baffling was the mastery he exhibited.

Moreover, he was endowed with abnormal power to resist fatigue. The longest day in the field or the longest innings left him fresh, until increasing bulk made running between the wickets an exhausting strain. True tales are told of his being up all night at the call of professional duty, and then making a huge score; of his rising before six a.m. to shoot or fish energetically before a long day's cricket; of his leaving a match at the Oval to win a sprint at the Crystal Palace. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that, in the earlier years of his supremacy, everything had to be run out. It was common, recently, to read that a batsman 'visibly tired as he approached his century'; he would have been more fatigued when getting fifty under the conditions prevailing when Grace made his first notable scores. But who ever saw Grace tired until he had passed the age of forty-five? It was this perennial faculty of endurance that assisted to make him so remarkable. Time after time we were informed that 'Grace was finished,' that 'he was done at last,' that 'even he could not be expected to go on for ever'; and shortly after he would play a succession of marvellous innings such as no other cricketer, young enough to be his son, could emulate.

The legend runs that, when the mother of the Graces wrote to George Parr suggesting that her son E. M. should play for the All England Eleven, she added.that she had a younger son who would be an even better bat because his defence was sounder. She it was who had taught all her boys; and tradition asserts she could field as smartly as a man, possessing an excellent return. Many now only in middle-age can remember the old lady, with her hair in ringlets, watching Gloucestershire matches, with her sons in the intervals hovering about her to hear pretty direct criticism of their form.

W. G. Grace did not have to wait long for recognition. Some weeks before his seventeenth birthday, in 1865, this bearded boy-for already he had a stubbly beardwas representing Gentlemen against Players. What he did for the amateurs may be gathered from the fact that, whereas from 1853 to 1865 they had not won once, from 1865 to 1880 they never lost a match to the professionals

to join in the perennial jest at his own quite unusual limitations. He could tell a good story cleverly in his broad, West-country accents, and was a capital listener, who often volunteered a dry observation redolent of natural humour. He never smoked; and nothing amused him more than the fruitless efforts of opposing unsophisticated cricketers to lure him into indiscretions at the luncheon table. Let it be added that he was exemplary in all the relationships of family life, that he possessed a host of friends, and that he was blessed with rude health and exuberant spirits.

His last two public appearances were among the most dignified of his career. At the dinner in commemoration of the centenary of Lord's cricket ground (1914), Mr C. E. Green proposed his health as 'the greatest cricketer that ever lived or ever will live'; to which Grace replied very briefly, saying he considered county cricket as good as ever it was, but that match play was rather too slow. A couple of months later, patriotically moved, he came forward with an eloquent letter urging the community to stop cricket: 'war-time is no time for games.' His own time arrived all too soon; and it is certain that thousands, who never felt the crushing grip with which he shook hands, realised an irreparable gap when they learnt that he had gone. A light of the happy past has been extinguished amid the deepening gloom caused by the bravest and best giving their lives in the noblest cause. The death of W. G. Grace closes an epoch in the annals of our national game. It also coincides with the end of an epoch in our national history. What will be the result of the war upon our social life, it is too soon to say; but one thing is pretty clear, that the easygoing, pleasure-loving times in which games assumed such importance, and in which it was possible for a great performer to attain such popular eminence, are gone, if not for ever, at least for a period of which even the younger generation can hardly expect to see the end.

HOME GORDON.

brother the most distinguished cricketer, nor yet the best field. Owing to the length of his career, the pristine excellence of W. G. Grace in the field has been somewhat lost sight of. In his prime, he was regarded as quite the equal of either of his brothers in a department in which the latter were sensational; and, to the very end, if a ball came near his hand it seemed to stick in it. W. G. dropped uncommonly few catches, and he also possessed an uncultivated aptitude for keeping wicket. It was as a captain that he was least distinguished. He possessed many qualities that made for good leadership, such as not grumbling at the weakness of sides he had to direct, and always showing himself kind and encouraging to young players, while never abating his personal efforts, no matter how hopeless or how inevitably drawn a match might be. In those respects he set an admirable example. But, when he captained a team in the field, he did not avail himself of all the resources at his disposal nor sufficiently adapt his tactics to the exigencies of the moment. Hence it happened that another was occasionally selected to be captain, even when Grace was the strongest player on a representative side.

As a man, Grace inspired not only general popularity but actual affection among those who knew him well. He was completely free from affectation, and as much at ease among the highest and most notable as in his own family circle. To the very end there lurked an attractive, almost boyish cheeriness in his nature. He loved a good joke, delighted in being with young people, was charming to children, and entered keenly into every sport or game in which he could join. It might be said that he was a burly Peter Pan, who never grew old in heart; and, to the last, he possessed that rather boisterous, obvious, hearty sense of rough fun associated traditionally with the yeomen of England in Plantagenet and Tudor times. His tastes, apart from a rubber, were all for out-of-door pursuits; not only cricket, but running-as a young man he won many races-beagling, shooting, fishing, bowls, and golf, which he called Scotch croquet.' All these gave him keen delight; and he was also an attentive student of contemporaneous form on the turf, though not often seen on a race-course. As a public speaker, he was the first

to join in the perennial jest at his own quite unusual limitations. He could tell a good story cleverly in his broad, West-country accents, and was a capital listener, who often volunteered a dry observation redolent of natural humour. He never smoked; and nothing amused him more than the fruitless efforts of opposing unsophisticated cricketers to lure him into indiscretions at the luncheon table. Let it be added that he was exemplary in all the relationships of family life, that he possessed a host of friends, and that he was blessed with rude health and exuberant spirits.

His last two public appearances were among the most dignified of his career. At the dinner in commemoration of the centenary of Lord's cricket ground (1914), Mr C. E. Green proposed his health as 'the greatest cricketer that ever lived or ever will live'; to which Grace replied very briefly, saying he considered county cricket as good as ever it was, but that match play was rather too slow. A couple of months later, patriotically moved, he came forward with an eloquent letter urging the community to stop cricket: 'war-time is no time for games.' His own time arrived all too soon; and it is certain that thousands, who never felt the crushing grip with which he shook hands, realised an irreparable gap when they learnt that he had gone. A light of the happy past has been extinguished amid the deepening gloom caused by the bravest and best giving their lives in the noblest cause. The death of W. G. Grace closes an epoch in the annals of our national game. It also coincides with the end of an epoch in our national history. What will be the result of the war upon our social life, it is too soon to say; but one thing is pretty clear, that the easygoing, pleasure-loving times in which games assumed such importance, and in which it was possible for a great performer to attain such popular eminence, are gone, if not for ever, at least for a period of which even the younger generation can hardly expect to see the end.

HOME GORDON.