ality, or shall I say the dominating genius, of Absolom.

Poor dear old Boss Absolom! Barring, perhaps, the great Sammy Woods, the most cheery, whole-hearted, nerveless, unconventional, and sturdy cricketer that ever appeared at Lords within the memory ofwell, perhaps, to be on the safe side, we had better say-a sexagenarian. Not merely worth a place on pretty well any side, but to be warranted to do the work of two ordinary men. It is difficult, perhaps, for an Oxonian to gauge the feelings of the Cambridge division. But we should be inclined to doubt whether the appearance either of Mike Mitchell or of the whole family of Fosters combined could ever have impressed the minds of Cantabs- we are alluding to spectators quite as much as to players-with such gloomy forebodings as to the ultimate issue of the match before a ball had been bowled, as those which the knowledge that Absolom in his day, and Woods in his, had to be reckoned with, brought home to the Oxonians. If widely divided by time, the pair had much in common. The presence of either the one or the other in any game was bound to act as a wholesome tonic to a side. In fielding, at all events, example is a thousand times better than precept, and slack or careless fielders, when either Absolom or Woods was to the fore, ought to have been -we have been told that it was not so in one case beyond the bounds of possibility. As

match-winners both were superlatively good, as winners of the 'Varsity Match wholly indispensable. True, Absolom lost one match and helped to win three, while Woods was never beaten, and only owed his failure to be returned a winner four times in succession to the iniquitous behaviour of the clerk of the weather. But it must be remembered that where Woods went into residence with his reputation as a great bowler already established, Absolom walked on to the field at Lords in his first year a comparatively unknown man. Neither had his own side yet learned to gauge his merits, nor had his adversaries yet gathered how formidable an antagonist he really was. Even so, he was the third highest scorer on his side in his first match, and took three wickets at a small cost in the one innings in which he was put on to bowl. Whether Boss Absolom, who could do most things in the athletic line rather better than his neighbours, ever so far continued his resemblance to Sammy Woods as to shine in Rugby Union Football, we know not. We are not even sure whether Rugby Union Football existed in his day,-certainly there were no Inter-University Matches. But if he ever did play the game, then, indeed, we can only say, "Heaven help the man whom he tackled." For, having caught his man and duly downed him, Boss, who ran like a hare and was as strong as a horse, was quite likely, in sheer exuberance of spirits, to have danced

on him first, bespattering him meanwhile with apt poetical quotations, and then to have felt puzzled and even hurt if the victim had not straightway risen from the mud, cracked a joke with his maltreater, and asked the latter to dine with him. Boss was as simple-minded as a child. If his hands were the hands of Esau, there was not the faintest trace of that other shrewder, more successful, and perhaps more highly polished brother in his whole composition.

Such then briefly was Boss Absolom, a cricketer whose indomitable courage and resourceful energy, whether he was batting, bowling, or fielding, were of a character to inspire a weak side with confidence, or to add to a strong side a double portion of the assurance of victory. It would have been almost impossible to believe that any University side that numbered in its ranks three such dangerous cricketers as Yardley, Thornton, and Absolom could ever have succumbed to a rival University side at Lords, and it is not much too much to say-we admit that such speculation is useless that in 1869 the trio could have "taken on " the whole Oxford Eleven in a single-wicket match with something like a fair chance of success. Thornton with his sneaks, a beastly style of bowling to score off in front of the wicket, might have given Absolom an occasional rest-not that we believe he ever required one; and curiously enough the

The rest of the '69 Eleven may be shortly dealt with. My recollections of Wilson are very imperfect, but as he got three goodish wickets in the match for nineteen runs, he may be said to have done his duty as a change bowler. Julius Brune was essentially a useful all-round cricketer, though in that particular year his performances suffered by comparison with those of his more brilliant colleagues. Transferred to the Oxford side, barring only Pauncefote and Tylecote, he might have been found the most useful member of it. If there was not much style about Weighell's cricket, there was plenty of what in a University match is apt to be an even more valuable asset-cheery self-confidence. As he could hit a ball harder and bowl it faster than most men of his time, he could certainly not be regarded as a passenger even on that strong side. Moreover he filled up the fifth place in the "firing line."

And the match itself? Falsely played probably. Most certainly the comparatively

narrow margin of 58 runs cannot be said to have adequately represented the real difference of strength between a very good and a very indifferent side. If the Oxonians probably scored about as many runs as they were worth against the Cambridge bowlers, the Cantabs by no means did themselves justice against the comparatively weak Oxford attack. Possibly the fortune of the wicket-there were many queer spots in a Lords pitch in those days-for once in a way favoured the weaker battalion; undoubtedly Walter, poor Pauncefote's heaven-born inspiration, bowled in bowled in the second innings as he never bowled either before or since. Three cricketers, whom I believe to have been almost eleventh hour choices, have left their mark on Inter-University cricket by compiling centuries at Lords; but Walter's is the solitary instance of a man, whose services as a bowler were never requisitioned or even seriously considered till his last year of residence, coming right into the very front rank. As a Freshman who had come up with a certain reputation from Eton, Walter had had a pretty exhaustive trial as a batsman before being pronounced as not quite up to the mark. But in presence of a tried and by no means bad trio of fast bowlers, his merits in that line had either been hidden under a bushel of greater lights' celebrity, or never taken seriously into account. Once a good fast bowler, always a good

fast bowler! May it not be said that this theory has been carried too far by successive generations of University captains? In point of fact the records of the 'Varsity match seem to tell us that, with three exceptions only, the successful fast bowler has had his own especial year, or indeed in some cases especial day of grace. On the one side-going back forty-three years, -Fellowes, Kenney, Francis, Butler, Whitby; on the other, Tillard, Luddington, Morton, Toppinthese one and all have been brilliantly successful in one year only, comparatively ineffectual in others. And the exceptions

Woods had four good years, Evans three, Powys one excellently good, another that was even better from the moment that a sloppy wicket so far recovered that he was able to go on and find tolerable foothold, a third only moderate. Yet

another extraordinary feature of the '69 match was that the more orthodox, and therefore one would think more reliable, batsmen on the Cambridge side may be said to have failed almost to a man, while the three hitters whose methods were anything but orthodox scored considerably more than half the runs made off the bat.

One word more before we go on to our other Eleven.

Why, it may fairly be asked, have I not rather picked the Cambridge Eleven of '72, which established what we believe still to be a record in 'Varsity matches for a first-wicket stand as well as what was at

And our third great Cambridge side. Consistency suggests that we ought to select a year wherein Woods, the greatest of University bowlers, was supported by certainly the most famous of amateur wicketkeepers. But, in the first place, we are beset with the difficulty that we know not whether to choose as absolutely the best side that ever played for Cambridge the Eleven captained by Woods himself in '90, or MacGregor's side in the following year. Both were extraordinarily good, being indeed almost entirely composed of men duly qualified at one time or another to play an important part in County cricket; both, if we mistake not, contained seven men who in the course of their career played for the Gentlemen at Lords; finally, in one year three, in the other four, names are to be found of international cricketers. For it will be remembered that in one year at all events the services of Woods were enlisted for the Australians. And yet, curiously enough, though opposed to only moderately good Oxford sides, neither of those two powerful Elevens really "came off" at Lords. In Woods's year the iniquitous conditions of weather and wicket played the mischief with a very strong batting side; in the other, Berkeley's magnificent and plucky bowling came so near to upsetting the good thing, that it was left to a batsman who had been guilty of sundry acts of

gross indiscretion in the field to redeem at once his own reputation and to pull what had really at one time looked like a lost game out of the fire. Wells, Woods, Jephson! pretty good trio even at that date to form a forlorn hope. But few of the spectators realised at the time that each member of it was to be found in later years making centuries against the best professional bowling of the day in the course of County Cricket.

Res venit ad triarios. Could that be said of the state of the game when Woods, looking if possible rather happier than usual, advanced amidst a breathless silence to receive the last ball of that historic match? Well, hardly so. Even in the case of failure there was no possibility of defeat to unnerve the incoming batsman. It would have been annoying, doubtless, to a degree, to get out for 0 at that period of the game, but the last run required to win is a far less ticklish and formidable affair where there are two or three wickets to fall than the last run required to avert defeat. But even in the extreme case, Woods was the least likely batsman of his day to repeat the tactics displayed by the last two Oxonians in Cobden's memorable year, and he could have been warranted on all sides as incapable either of tamely taking his bat out of harm's way at the extreme psychological moment, or of