felling; but their case is quite exceptional.
Most of our northern athletes are used simply
to make holiday, and leave their sheep-tending,
or inn-keeping, or village trade for a few
hours in order to enter their names at some
neighbouring meeting, and to take their
chance of being in the last two or three
rounds (for which proportionable rewards
are given), or of being among the sixteen
last standers, or of even getting the
champion's belt. Besides these public sports there
are local ones of constant occurrence in every
valley however small, for the north country
population is far better off than that of the
south, and has plenty of leisure to enjoy its
favourite amusement. Each hero of his own
hamlet, therefore, in venturing to such places
as Carlisle or Ulverston, is certain of not
being altogether unknown, and of getting
supported by his little band of admirers;
nay, so strong are these local attachments
that not only are all Cumberland ready to set
their lives upon the issue against a
Westmoreland man, and vice versâ, but two coming
from the same place will generally refuse to
wrestle at all, and he who is considered the
better man is "laid down" to, and "stands"
fresh and ready for more alien opponents.
No dale, far hidden and set amidst the
barrenest crags, is so poor but that it furnishes
its belt of good broad leather with iron or
steel buckle for a prize at feast-time, which
the statesmen of the north are wont to wear
as proudly, and to win, at least as honestly,
as those of Downing Street their ribbons and
garters. Almost every farm-house has its
heir-looms of this kind, and we have seen
grandfather, son, and grandson sitting in
their eating-room with these trophies, fresh
and fading, of the three generations
suspended from the dark wood panelling behind
them.

As the circumstances which attend these
sports in towns must needs materially detract
from their usefulness, and from the enjoyment
to be derived from them, so, in the lake
country, their every accessary seems to
heighten what is pleasant in them, and to
increase the gratification of the spectator.
The fine bracing character of the air—the
open air—in which the sports are held; the
exceeding beauty, in almost every case, of the
scenery surrounding the place of meeting;
the perfect good humour which prevails
among the many combatants, and the scientific
knowledge and intense interest exhibited
by the lookers-on, unite in making these
mountain revels matters very different indeed
from the scenes of the prize-ring or the race-
course.

There is not, we believe, a more beautiful
prospect in all England than that afforded
from the Ferry Ring on Windermere, as we
sit on its rude wooden stand, and look straight
out to northward; six miles of the broad
blue lake lie immediately beneath us, gemmed
with innumerable wooded islets, and sprinkled
with countless sails, for there is a regatta on
the water to please the ladies (who rarely
honour the wrestlers with their presence),
and for those weaker brethren who prefer
aquatics. How fair looks she who is well
named Belle Isle, with that fine timber skirting
her curving bays, and Lily Holm yonder,
—what a fit garden is it for the loveliest of
flowers! What mighty woods to westward
clothe all those swelling hills to the water's
edge, made doubly large by their reflection
in the stilly depths! How statelily beyond,
at the lake's head, is marshalled that great
mountain host with its mighty flanks, far
undulating on either side! What a queen looks
Fairfield—serene and emerald-crowned—and
how fitly Langdale Pikes, themselves right
royal, are guarding those shut mountain gales,
within which reigns, invisible, Scawfell, their
king. There is music rising from below upon
the lake, and echoing sweet and far, and
voices singing which awaken, away in the
grey hill solitudes, snatches of broken melody.
Afar, the grandeur of the mountain world,
and near, the beauty of the lake with wooded
isles! What would we more of nature ? As
for man—in this small ring before us, the
foreground of the picture—there will be seen
as splendid specimens of strength and form
as Britain boasts of; the vigour of sinew, the
shifts of suppleness, can be no further
exercised than we shall see them used this day.
The light-weights—those that are under
eleven stone—will wrestle first this morning:
a man who can but just get into them, has,
of course, the better chance of doing well in
them, and in the heavies also, than one less
sturdy.

"Nay, you're over weight, John, by two
pounds," says the clerk of the ring, to some
candidate seated in the weighing scale, who
smiles good-naturedly, and takes off nearly
everything, but still is not quite qualified;
he puts, therefore, a couple of great-coats on,
and takes a run in the road by the lake's
side, whereby, his too solid flesh being swelled
and dissolved into a dew, he comes to scale a
light-weight after all. Their names being
entered, to the number, perhaps, of forty
pairs, each of them is written on a slip of
paper and thrown into a hat, from which
they are drawn at hazard, two at a time, by
village children. The pair thus selected have
to wrestle together; but when a novice finds
himself opposed to a very good man, he will
often "lay down," and give up his modicum
of chance at once, whereupon the other
receives his ticket from the official, just as
though he had "felled" his adversary in the
ring. There are a great many "lay downs"
in the first round, so that the wrestling gets
select, and very much improves as it
proceeds. The third round comprehends therefore
(unless in the case of some accidental
defeat) a score of the best men; they strip
to their drawers and flannel waistcoats,
exhibiting such studies for the painter and the