Chapter II.
But to what was all this tending, and to what condition had the Lawn-Tennis players brought the Great Western State which they inhabited?
A monarch on the throne, whose age alone prevented her from casting in her lot with an aristocracy of wealth and learning, who had already commenced to narrow life within the limits of the twelve-yard court!!
A gentler sex, forsaking the sacred duties of domesticity that they might lend grace and elegance to the all-prevailing pastime!!
A degraded peasantry, living but to delineate on level lawns the bounds past which England’s greatest and noblest born must not propel the gyrating sphere!!
A rustic generation, rising but to collect for their oppressors the distant-driven ball, and developing into manhood merely to tend and trim the smooth-shaven Lawn-Tennis ground, which had now become a necessary adjunct alike to glebe and manor!!
It was an age of Lawn-Tennis!!
“My prophetical instincts tell me,” said Retiarius, as he and his friends were waiting for the nets to be arranged,—“My prophetical instincts tell me that the great coming stroke will be the volley.”
“Why, so?” said Sphairistikos.
“It is as yet,” replied he, “only half-developed. A nation young in Lawn-Tennis has much to learn; much to forget. My impression is that the volley, properly understood, will convulse the future.”