LAWN TENNIS.

Foot-ball is too rough, cricket is too skilful a game for every body to a pire to its honors and delights, but lawn tennis is within the reach of almost any man, and of any woman under forty. As yet the game has not permeated all classes of the communiy nor will its lasting character be assured until this is achieved. What has conferred continuous vitality upon cricket and foot-ball is that they are "understanded of the people." A game that is the game of only one class, or at most of only one section of the community, can never excite the enthusiasm or acquire the national dignity enjoyed by one where, by a touch of nature, prince, peer and peasant are made kin. Lawn tennis is exactly calculated to be a game of the latter sort. It is fit for old and young, for men and women, for the strong and the weak. It expands the lungs, strengthens the muscles, improves the condition and takes off "weight" as surely as a Turkish bath, and more wholesomely. Such a game ought to be "national" in the best sense of the word.

There is a genial, social aspect about lawn tennis that has, no doubt, largely ministered to the growth of its popularity. It possesses no mysteries like the ancient and classic game whose name it has borrowed, and whose champions look down upon the intruder as rather a sorry sort of parvenu. A person who cannot be made to understand that the advance at a bound from "fifteen" to "thirty" is a perfectly natural numerical progression, that thirty is a matter of course leaps at once to forty, and that "deuce" is the parent of "vantage," must be singularly obtuse.

Moreover, lawn tennis may be watched with delight and interest, even by those whose intellects are below - or above - mastering such elementary propositions as these. The skill of the player may be appreciated by people who have not a conception what is the score; and the neatness with which a ball is "placed," or the rapidity with which it is "volleyed," need not be missed because the spectator is utterly at sea as to which side of the net is getting the best of it. - [London Standard.