as purely financial speculations, for the promotion and success of which the best cricketing talent of the country was enlisted, they made annual progresses through England, meeting the picked local talent of all cricketing centres, generally reinforced by imported men, and meeting each other at Lord's on WhitMonday, this last match being regarded as at least the equal of the Gentlemen and Players fixture as a display of scientific cricket. The periodical visits of these skilled troupes not only excited the interest and improved the cricket of the local centres—Dr. Grace himself bears ample testimony to the keenness caused by their presence—but they also opened the eyes of cricket-lovers to the fact that good cricket could be made self-supporting. Further, they saw the immense progress that the game would make, and the enormous facilities that would be offered to that progress, in every county which had a club and a centre of its own. It may be said, indeed, that the success of these peripatetic teams, while it conduced to their own collapse, suggested and promoted the foundation of county cricket as it is played nowadays. The two great elevens did their work well and thoroughly, both for themselves and for the game, and when they dispersed, and their constituent members were drafted into the county elevens, they could at least claim that they had popularised the game, had improved the methods in which it was played, and had left behind them a valuable legacy to all those who either played or admired cricket. Think of this, all of you who are apt to remember only the pettinesses and schisms
