everybody but myself, who cared not
what part of England might glorify itself at the expense of another. It
is necessary to be born an Englishman, I believe, in order to enjoy
this great national game; at any rate, as a spectacle for an outside
observer, I found it lazy, lingering, tedious, and utterly devoid of
pictorial effects. Choice of other amusements was at hand. Butts for
archery were established, and bows and arrows were to be let, at so
many shots for a penny,--there being abundance of space for a farther
flight-shot than any modern archer can lend to his shaft. Then there
was an absurd game of throwing a stick at crockery-ware, which I have
witnessed a hundred times, and personally engaged in once or twice,
without ever having the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery.
In other spots, you found donkeys for children to ride, and ponies of a
very meek and patient spirit, on which the Cockney pleasure-seekers of
both sexes rode races and made wonderful displays of horsemanship. By
way of refreshment there was gingerbread, (but, as a true patriot,
I must pronounce it greatly inferior to our native dainty,) and
ginger-beer, and probably stancher liquor among the booth-keeper's
hidden stores. The frequent railway-trains, as well as the numerous
steamers to Greenwich, have made the vacant portions of Blackheath a
play-ground and breathing-place for the Londoners, readily and very
cheaply accessible; so that, in view of this broader use and enjoyment,
I a little grudged the tracts that have been filched away, so to speak,
and individualized by thriving citizens. One sort of visitors especially
interested me: they were schools of little boys or girls, under the
guardianship of their instructors,--charity-schools, as I often surmised
from their aspect, collected among dark alleys and squalid courts; and
hither they were brought to spend a summer afternoon, these pale little
progeny of the sunless nooks of London, who had never known that the sky
was any broader than that narrow and vapory strip above their native
lane. I fancied that they took but a doubtful pleasure, being half
affrighted at the wide, empty space overhead and round about them,
finding the air too little medicated with smoke, soot, and graveyard
exhalations, to be breathed with comfort, and feeling shelterless and
lost because grimy London, their slatternly and disreputable mother, had
suffered them to stray out of her arms.

Passing among thes