The contest lies between the parishes of St. Peter's and All Saints, and the goals to which the ball is taken are 'Nun's Mill' for the latter and the Gallows balk on the Normanton Road for the former. None of the other parishes in the borough take any direct part in the contest, but the inhabitants of all join in the sport, together with persons from all parts of the adjacent country. The players are young men from eighteen to thirty or upwards, married as well as single, and many veterans who retain a relish for the sport are occasionally seen in the very heat of the conflict. The game commences in the market-place, where the partisans of each parish are drawn up on each side, and about noon a large ball is tossed up in the midst of them. This is seized upon by some of the strongest and most active men of each party. The rest of the players immediately close in upon them and a solid mass is formed. It then becomes the object of each party to impel the course of the crowd towards their particular goal. The struggle to obtain the ball, which is carried in the arms of those who have possessed themselves of it, is then violent, and the motion of the human tide heaving to and fro without the least regard to consequences is tremendous.

Broken shins, broken heads, torn coats, and lost hats are amongst the minor accidents of this fearful contest, and it frequently happens that persons fall owing to the intensity of the pressure, fainting and bleeding beneath the feet of the surrounding mob. But it would be difficult to give an adequate idea of this ruthless sport. A Frenchman passing through Derby remarked, that if Englishmen called this playing, it would be impossible to say what they would call fighting. Still the crowd is encouraged by respectable persons attached to each party, who take a surprising interest in the result of the day's sport, urging on the players with shouts, and even handing to those who are exhausted oranges and other refreshment. The object of the St. Peter's party is to get the ball into the water down the Morledge brook into the Derwent as soon as they can, while the All Saints party endeavour to prevent this and to urge the ball westward. The St. Peter players are considered to be equal to the best water spaniels, and it is certainly curious to see two or three hundred men up to their chins in the Derwent continually ducking each other.

The numbers engaged on both sides exceed a thousand, and the streets are crowded with lookers-on. The shops are closed, and the town presents the aspect of a place suddenly taken by storm.

The whole is a good piece of description, and the expression. of amusement at respectable persons encouraging the sport is decidedly refreshing. It is very obvious that there could have been no kicking in the Derby game any more than there was in the game at Scone; and this is made clear by another extract from Glover, who says, 'A desperate game of football in which the ball is struck with the feet of the players is played at Ashover and other wakes.'

The Corfe Castle game was one of the same nature as those already described, and is still played up to this day, anyone being at liberty to join in the general hustle which takes place on Shrove Tuesday and on Ash Wednesday; the ball is kicked from Corfe to Owre quay to preserve the ancient right-of-way claimed by the company of Marblers of Purbeck. The freemen marblers, who are a body existing from time immemorial, have always been regulated by articles the earliest extant copy of which bears the date 1553. The seventh article of the regulations of this date runs as follows: 'That any man in our com-panie the Shrovtewsdaie after his marriage shall paie unto the wardings for the use and benefit of the companie twelve pence, and the last married man to brynge a footballe according to the custome of our companie.' The game, therefore, was a customary one in 1553; it has certainly been an annual affair ever since, and the fact is noteworthy that the game at Corfe has survived in such an out-of-the-way corner of England as the Isle of Purbeck, where athletic sports or Rugby Union or Association matches are seldom even heard of.

So far we have traced the history of football as it was played by the people at large, and have shown that it had a continued existence for at least six centuries as a recognised manly sport. We have seen also that at the end of the last and beginning of the present century, the game was certainly waning in popularity, and that the writers of the early part of this century are inclined to treat it as a sort of interesting relic of antiquity. To-day, however, football can be fairly described as once again the most thoroughly popular of all British sports. The game attracts as many spectators, and as many players in the winter, as the national sport of cricket in the summer. All that remains to complete the history of football is to describe the causes and progress of the modern revival of the game.

The present writer has already, in conjunction with Mr. J. E. Vincent, written a small book upon the history of Football,' which has not only covered a good deal of the ground which has been traced in this chapter, but discusses the origin of the various forms of school football. The conclusion arrived at in that work was that 'in each particular school the rules of the game were settled by the capacity of the playground; and that as these were infinitely various in character so were the games various.' It might also have been added that the Association game, or at least the various forms of game where kicking alone was allowed, and collaring and therefore running with the ball forbidden, also arose entirely in the schools, where either from the want of a sufficient playground, or from other causes, the old rough game was impracticable. There can be no doubt that the game which we have described in the preceding pages was not only risky to limb (that perhaps was a slight consideration for English schoolboys) when played upon a good grass plot, but when played in a walled-in space such as the cloisters of Charterhouse, or on a very small and confined playground with a flagged pavement, would have been probably dangerous to life.