A Famous Field.

Doubtless the field best known throughout the world as devoted solely to sport and recreation is "Lords," the great cricket field of London, the home of the famous Marylebone Club. It has a peculiar and not uninteresting history, having been started about a hundred years ago, and having twice changed its location. The history is thus related in the Quarterly Review:

"It was due to the efforts of one Thomas Lord, who was promised the support of Lord Winchilsea, Col. Lennox, afterward Duke of Richmond, and others, if he would start a ground at Marylebone in secession to the ground in the White Conduit Fields, then probably being built over. Lord was a descendant of a Roman Catholic family of Yorkshire farmers who had suffered in the confiscations of 1745. About 1782 he was a wine merchant and a cricketer of great zeal and some ability. Lord, who appears to have had energy, closed with the offer, and established a ground in what is now Dorset square-not perhaps, we may opine, without some help from the Sackville interest with the owners of the Portman estate. On this ground, called Lord's, a match was played in three days of June, 1787, between the all England and five men of the White Conduit Club. with six men given. Lord Winchilsea and Sir Peter Burrel played for the latter, who were easily defeated. Lord's efforts resulted in the establishment of the Marylebone Club, who revised the rules of their favorite game before the season of 1788, on June 27 of which year they played and won their first recorded match. We say their first recorded match, because, owing to the destruction by fire in 1825 of many of the old annals of the Marylebone Club, their early history is not perfectly traceable, and it is by no means impossible that the club may have played their opening match before. Lord stayed, and the Marylebone Club stayed with him, at Dorset square, till 1810 or 1811, when, in consequence, apparently, of a disagreement with Mr. Portman about rent, he migrated to a ground called the new or middle ground, near North Bank, Regent's Park. Three years later the Regent's Canal was cut through the ground, and Lord removed to the ground now owned by the Marylebone Club in St, John's Wood road. The original turf used in Dorset square was taken up, so says Mr. Lilly white, with each removal, and consequently when the Marylebone Club played on June 22, 1814, their first important match, defeating Hertfords hire in one inning, they played on the same turf as that which years before had afforded foot-hold to the moribund White Conduit Club. From 1814 "Lord's" has been a household word in cricket"