Rise of Rugby Foot Ball in England.

According to a writer in the Encyclopaedia Brittannica, it was the Voluntary movement of 1860, and the impetus thereby given to open-air exercise and amusement, that have caused the revival of foot-ball. But, whatever the cause may have been, of the revival itself there is no question. Thirty years or so ago, for example, the game was hardly known at the Universities, was at best pursued by some exuberent freshmen, Etonians mostly, who had not yet outgrown their salad days. Now our "young barbarians" of Oxford and Cambridge kick away at each other's shins as keenly as they hit each other's bowling about the Lord's, or tug away at each other year by year from Putney to Mortlake. The county elevens who compete for the challenge cup of the Football Association are chosen with almost as much care as for cricket ; nay, it is whispered that professional players for the former are almost as much in demand as for the latter game, and get pretty nearly as well paid-which rumour, we may observe, if it be true, is a direct infraction of that rule of the association which enacts that "Any member of a Club receiving remuneration or consideration of any sort, above his actual expenses and any wages actually lost by any such player taking part in either Cup, Inter-Association, or International contests, and any club employing such player, shall be excluded from the Association."

Nor is age now considered any bar to the active enjoyment of the game. Among the ranks of the "Old Etonians," and of other Clubs similarly constituted, may be seen players who get over the ground with an agility, and charge their opponents with a hardihood, perfectly astounding for their years. To watch some of these veterans limping out of a furious "maul," or rolling on the muddy turf, would give a stranger, no doubt, a high opinion of the vivacity and pluck of our countrymen ; but to one of philosophical bent-such a one, for example, as Mr. Max O'Rell (who has indeed branded the game as "fit only for savages")-the spectacle might also have a ludicrous side. He might feel inclined to exclaim with the poet :

Ah ! tell them they are men !

A man does, we venture to think, seem a little out of place in a football field.

The Encyclopaedic writer, to whose learned dissertation on the game we have already owed our debt, does indeed make one statement to which we must venture to demur. Winchester and Harrow, he says, are "the chief exponents of the game wherein kicking alone is allowed as a means of propulsion." Eton "plays a hybrid game in two different ways, 'at the Wall' and 'in the Field,' the latter being a sort of mixture of both kinds of play." Mother Eton has been a good deal harried and mocked in these latter times, poor thing ! But surely so baseless an imputation as this has never yet been cast upon her. We had always thought the game as played in "the Field" at Eton was the purest form of football known, the most essentially foot ball of any. On no excuse whatever may the hands be employed, except to touch the ball, when it passes behind the goal lines, to save or get a "rouge." Even the rules of the Association game, which may be described as a sort of compromise between all rules, are more lenient ; for by them the goal-keeper may in defence of his post make use of his hands in any way save in carrying the ball ; he may stop it with them, or hit it away. But in the Eton field even that last resource is denied ; even in the sorest straits, by the feet, and by the feet alone, must the goal be saved.-[Review.