Athletics

5 ATHLETICS. Ireland proved a more congenial soil;and on 28 Feb., 1857, the Dublin University FootballClub held some foot races, followed that day month by the Dublin University Athletic Sports,which have continued ever since, and have always been the most fashionable meeting in the world. Trinity sports are the hub round which the best Dublin society congregates ; and it is by no means uncommonfor twenty- five or thirty thousandspectators, mostly of the highest rank of society, to assemble in the College Park on these occasions. The oldest Metropolitan meeting is that of Kensington Grammar School, which was started in 1852, and is still kept up. But so far such sports as were held were con­ ducted in a primitive kind of way; and it remained for Cheltenham College to inaugurate the first formal sports, with all their paraphernalia of roped course, printed pro­ grammes, with list of officials, competitors, etc., and so forth. This was on 22 Oct., 1853. Soon after, in 1855, the first athletic book appeared—a sure sign that sport was making headway—" Training of Man for Pedestrian Exer­ cises," by J. H.Walsh, better knownas "Stonehenge," and afterwards the foremost writer on British sports, and for many years editor of the Field. These articles were after­ wards republished in the first edition of " British Rural Sports " (Oct.,1855), under Book VII. It is there stated that "6 to 6i miles per hour is theoutside rate of walking," and the running speeds, "quarter of a mile in a minute; half, 2J min.; mile, 4^ to 5 min." At the Universities college after college gave encouragement to the newmovement by holding sports; but the linesthese wereconducted on—and for many years afterwards—would sadly shock the present administrators of the amateur law ; prizes, ifnot actual cash, were often taken out in "wines," and so forth. So general had the movement become, that in 1857 the Cambridge