ll was
occasionally hit by Mr. C. I. Thornton. The present Hove ground dates
from 1871. I like to think that George IV., though no great cricketer
himself (he played now and then when young "with great condescension and
affability"), is the true father of Sussex cricket. He may deserve all
that Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Thackeray said of him, but without his
influence and patronage the history of cricket would be the poorer by
many bright pages.

[Sidenote: THE NONPAREIL]

Where Montpellier Crescent now stands, was, eighty years ago, the ground
on which Frederick William Lillywhite, the Nonpareil, used to bowl to
gentlemen young or old who were prepared to put down five shillings for
the privilege. Little Wisden acted as a long stop. Lillywhite was the
real creator of round-arm bowling, although Tom Walker of the Hambledon
Club was the pioneer and James Broadbridge an earlier exponent. It was
not until 1828 that round-arm was legalised. "Me bowling, Pilch batting,
and Box keeping wicket--that's cricket," was the old man's dictum; or
"When I bowls and Fuller bats," a variant has it, bowl being pronounced
to rhyme with owl, "then you'll see cricket." He was thirty-five before
he began his first-class career, he bowled fewer than a dozen wides in
twenty-seven years, and his myriad wickets cost only seven runs a-piece.

Brighton in its palmiest days was practically contained within the
streets that bear boundary names, North Street, East Street, West
Street, and the sea, with the parish church high on the hill. On the
other side of the Steyne were the naked Downs, while the Lewes road and
the London Road were mere thoroughfares between equally bare hills, with
a few houses here and there.

During the town's most fashionable period, which continued for nearly
fifty years--say from 1785 to 1835--everyone journeyed thither; and
indeed everyone goes to Brighton to-day, although its visitors are now
anonymous where of old they were notorious. I believe that Robert
Browning is the only eminent Englishman that never visited the town.
Perhaps it does little for poets; yet Byron was there as a young man,
much in the company of a charming youth with whom he often sailed in the
Channel, and who afterwards was discovered to be a girl.

[Sidenote: HORACE SMITH]

A minor poet, Horace Smith, gives us, in _Horace in London_, a sprightly
picture of the town in 1813, from which we see that the changes between
now and then are only in exte