complexion, 'Silver Billy '. Beldham was a close-set, active man, about five feet eight inches. Never was such a player! so safe, so brilliant, so quick, so circumspect; so able in counsel, so active in the field; in deliberation so judicious, in execution so tremendous. It mattered not to him who bowled, or how he bowled, fast or slow, high or low, straight or bias; away flew the ball from his bat, like an eagle on the wing. It was a study for Phidias to see Beldham rise to strike; the grandeur of the attitude, the settled composure of the look, the piercing lightning of the eye, the rapid glance of the bat, were electrical. Men's hearts throbbed within them, their cheeks turned pale and red. Michael Angelo should have painted him. Beldham was great in every hit, but his peculiar glory was the cut. Here he stood with no man beside him, the laurel was all his own; it was like the cut of a racket. His wrist seemed to turn on springs of the finest steel. He took the ball, as Burke did the House of Commons, between wind and water; not a moment too soon or late. Beldham still survives. He lives near Farnham; and in his kitchen, black with age, but, like himself, still untouched with worms, hangs the trophy of his victories; the delight of his youth, the exercise of his manhood, and the glory of his age—his BAT. Reader! believe me, when I tell you I trembled when I touched it; it seemed an act of profaneness, of violation. I pressed it to my lips, and returned it to its sanctuary.
The last, the 'Ultimus Romanorum', we can find room to commemorate, is David Harris. Who knows not David Harris? the finest bowler whom the world ever rejoiced in when living, or lamented over when dead. Harris was by trade a potter, and lived at Odiham in Hants, an honest, plain-faced (in two senses), worthy man. 'Good David Harris' he was called; of strict principle, high honour, inflexible integrity; a character on which scandal or calumny never dared to breathe. A good cricketer, like a good orator, must be an honest man; but what are orators compared to the
