In the country especially, where the sports were promoted by the help of subscriptions from the neighbourhood, people naturally declined to see the money they subscribed devoted to prizes to be competed for solely by gentlemen, and the gradual stream of public opinion from 1870 to 1880 flowed steadily in the direction of allowing any one to compete for a prize, whatever his social position might be, provided he cared to run for prizes in preference to running for money like a professional 'ped.' The result has been as we have seen, that with the rapid extension of the athletic movement throughout the kingdom, a large number of those who in former times would have become professionals have turned amateurs because amateurism is more lucrative. Of this class it may be safely said that they will never abandon the amateur ranks until they find there is more money to be made as professionals. The recognition and encouragement of an honest and open professional athleticism throughout all districts of the country would be the best possible means of purging the amateur ranks of those who have no business to remain in them.

As soon as the large number of the mechanic classes, who cannot afford to despise the money which they can make out of their athletic powers, find that it is just as lucrative and just as honourable to compete as professionals, they will cease to call themselves amateurs, and amateurism will be the better for their departure.

As regards the lowest class of runners, be they professionals or amateurs, who run to the orders of their bookmakers, and win or lose races just as the monetary arrangements make it advisable, nothing can be done to drive these off the path but a vigilant exercise of power of disqualification, and a rigid suppression of all open betting upon the ground. Every sport which comes to the state of merely being a resource for betting will arrive eventually at a condition of rottenness which will make it the despair of a reformer; and if amateur athletics eventually get into the hands of the bookmakers, the sooner the sport 'goes under' the better.

If, therefore, amateur athletics are to be purged of their abuses, one can safely point to the direction which the reform must take. The suppression of betting upon the ground must be rigidly enforced at every meeting great or small, for if the runners are to become simply animals with so much 'money on them,' it cannot matter a straw whether the stake for which they run is money or a cup; and, indeed, the running is much more likely to be honest with a money prize than with a cup which is not readily converted into money. Unless the runners are all genuine amateurs, running for honour and not for money, it is impossible when betting is rife to keep the sport pure, and the Amateur Athletic Association had better dissolve and cease its labours than try to stem a tide which will be too strong for it.

Granting, however, that betting can be suppressed or kept within reasonable limits, the movement to purify athletics from the sham amateurs must be in two directions. The real amateurs must try to encourage professionalism open and undisguised, for the establishment of recognised professional sports throughout the country would draw off from the quasi-amateur ranks those who take it up from interested motives. The other remedy is easier, and rests with the genuine amateurs themselves without requiring any assistance from the public patronage. The bona fide gentleman-amateur must give up the idea of earning valuable prizes, and must take to the system of running for medals of little value, or to earn his 'colours,' as at the Universities, without any further reward.

In other sports, gentlemen are willing enough to toil and practise to gain honour alone. The cricketer plays assiduously for seasons, and is sufficiently rewarded by gaining a place in his county eleven, and athletics could be placed upon a sounder footing if there were more representative competitions which it would be recognised as an honour to win, or even to take part in, without any special stimulant. The body athletic has become corrupted by too much prosperity, and the proper method for its recovery is a severe course of ascetic training. When amateur athletics are again confined to men who show by their acts that they run for sport and not for gain, then the tide of public favour will flow back to them with full force, and athletes will have full honour in their own country.

We have purposely refrained during the writing of these chapters from rhapsodising upon the advantages of the cultivation of athletic excellence to the individual and the nation. In these days of endless writing, when many articles are indited which, like bad sermons, consist of a few texts largely diluted, it is usual to found all the possible praises of athletics upon two texts: the one from a classical source alluding to the necessary connection between mental and bodily soundness, and the other from a native source alluding to the connection between military excellence and playing fields. As no book upon athletics is considered complete without some allusion to these time-honoured friends, we have thus cursorily alluded to them at the end of our task, but have before preached no sermon upon these passages, for a very simple reason. We take it that at the present day it is but a waste of labour to demonstrate to Englishmen the advantages of manly sports, of hard exercise, and friendly competition. For the last five-and-twenty years the young men of England have flung themselves into the pursuit of hard bodily exercise and sporting competitions upon foot.

The youth of the present day fresh from school, instead of spending his leisure time in seeing cocks fight or terriers kill rats, goes off to the football or cricket field, to the river or the running path, and finds his recreation in the exercise of his own body. The result of a generation of athletic sport has made the nation stronger, manlier, cleaner, and more sober than it was before the pursuit of athletics became a national characteristic. When the athletic movement first came into full force it found vigorous opponents. Mr. Wilkie Collins in particular wrote a novel in which the wicked brother was an athlete - a heartless villain, without manners or brains, and the sworn companion of swindlers and sharpers; while the virtuous brother, who detested hard exercise and played the fiddle, had every conceivable virtue of morals and intellect. The public was thrilled by the novel but not convinced by it, and with reason. If any one will take the trouble to study a school, a college, or any large body of men, he will find that the dozen best cricketers, footballers, or oarsmen will provide more clever scholars, and - what is quite as important - more capable and better mannered men than any average dozen of the others; and, indeed, it may safely be added that a dozen athletes will produce as many violin-players as a dozen non-athletes. There may be, and doubtless are, plenty of strong hulking fellows in whom athletic propensities are joined with rough behaviour; but the manners of these are none the more rough because they have taken to athletics.