ket. France seems to have been the original
home of tennis, which in the thirteenth century was played in
unenclosed spaces; but in the fourteenth it migrated to the towns,
and walls enclosed the motions of the ball. In Paris alone there
were said to be eighteen hundred tennis-courts. In the sixteenth
century there were several covered tennis-courts in England, and
some of our English monarchs were very devoted to the game. Henry
VII. used to play tennis, and there is a record of his having lost
twelvepence at tennis, and threepence for the loss of balls. Henry
VIII. was also very fond of the game, and lost much money at wagers
with certain Frenchmen; but, like a sensible man, "when he perceived
their craft he eschewed their company, and let them go." He built
the famous court at Hampton, which still remains. Charles II. also
played tennis. The old game is very different from the modern
lawn-tennis which is now so popular: it was always the game of the
select few, and not of the many, like its precocious offspring; and
there are only thirty-one tennis-courts in England at the present
day. The court attached to the palace of the French King Louis XVI.
at Versailles was the scene of some very exciting meetings in the
early days of the French Revolution in 1789.

[Illustration: PALL-MALL.]

[Illustration: TENNIS.]

There were some other forms of ball-play, such as balloon-ball,
stow-ball, &c.; but of these it is hardly needful for me to speak,
as they are only varieties of those games which I have already
described. The history of football has been narrated in a preceding
chapter. You will be able to trace from the descriptions of these
old sports the ancestors of our noble game of cricket, and wonder at
the extraordinary development of so scientific a game from such rude
and simple beginnings.

The floors of the houses and churches of old England consisted
simply of the hard, dry earth, which the people covered with rushes;
and once a year there was a great ceremony called "Rush-bearing,"
when the inhabitants of each village or town went in procession to
the church to strew the floor with newly-cut rushes. The company
went to a neighbouring marsh and cut the rushes, binding them in
long bundles, and decorating them with ribands and flowers. Then a
procession was formed, every one bearing a bundle of rushes; and
with music, drums, and ringing of bells they marched to the church,
and strewed the floor with their honou