Morning journal and courier., 1890-07-17
French Athletic Sports.

From the London Saturuay heNteW-I
 What is Lsnditi A man may know French fairly we'll, and yet bs puzzled by the word It is an old one, meaning 8 fair that at St. Dennis). and 1t has been applied to the inter-scholsstic games O the Parisian schools which are being held in the Bois de Boulogne. The Temps publishes an illustrated supplement, with interesting details and illustrations. The Lendit has been got up by the League of Physical Edu- cation. The object is excellent. French school boys are said to be gawky, indolent in osmes. lappuid; and to cure all these evils sports very like our own are being encour- aged. The French are persuaded that most of our games, including even cricket and foot ball, were borrowed from them. The history of games is very obscure; but we may remark that even the Australian black
 has a form of punt about of his own, that
 we owe lacrosse to the Hurons, and that Ro- man games were probably, in a less regular form, very like ours. We might as we'll at- tempt to assign proverbs, ballads, riddles or nursery tales to one single country ss to do the same for games in their early rudimenta- ry shape. Nausicas played at Q sport which might be developed into either tennis, base ball, stool ball or cricket. As @ matter of historical fact, it was the French mainly who gave tennis its actual form; England did the same for cricket, America for base ball, Scotland for golf, Rugby for it's own peculiar foot ball, Eton for its singular lives. We know who fashioned this or that sport into | it's ultimate form; we do not know what na. | ton first kicked some sort of goal or firsl played hockey in its existing shape. Pole came from Persia; but polo is merely eques. | trian hockey, and Augustus, according tc | Suetonius, took pleasure in 6 pedestrian spe. oies of that exercise. "Balloonn was found among the Aztecs; the Romans also played
 with an inflated ball. Origins are purely
 prehistoric, and cannot with certainty b. traced to any locality.
 The French sports are to include long ten his, played in the open air, cousin of Pal lone Certain chases are marked, as in reg
 ular tennis. The players may number from two to sixteen. The game has survived or the Spanish frontier, and there is no doub
 that it is capital pastime. La Theque VI
 have borrowed, according to the Temps
 Perhaps we did, 1t is not an importan
 point. La Theque is base ball, or an inter
 mediate between base ball and rounders. II
 the drawing the pitcher is pitching over
 handed; boy is lying on the ground 6 l short leg, as 1t were, and seems very likel, to get his head broken. The artist, we fan ] cy, knows little of the game; ct least he ap } pears to have grouped all the bases in e spo about twenty feet square. The pitcher
 too near the striker, the feldsrs are too clos in, the man who answers to our wicket keer ! or is in the wrong place. The game is obv ously not nearly 90 severe and dangerous (
 in the United States. Elegance rather ths
 l severity is said to mark French game , Football (barette) has none of our regretts @ ferocity. When @ man runs with the ball f is not collared and perhaps half strangle i, he is merely touched. We gather th ' 'spassingn is not practiced. This may all s elegant, and 1t is decidedly safe; but 1t e D nos bs sush training for endurance q