By ROBERT MACGREGGOR.

It was in France that what its devotees call “the king of games,” tennis, was originated; but the ground-work is found in the simple old hand ball play that figured so conspicuously in the every-day life of the classical world. It is of little use to speculate in which of the varieties of ball-play mentioned by ancient writers is to be found the progenitor of this pastime. At any rate, a game very like tennis, in which the ball was driven to and fro by a racket, was played in 1380, and soon after we find Richard II. including this game among those unlawful for laboring people. The name “tennis” first occurs in Gower’s “Ballade” in 1400. There is an old story of historical interest told in connection with our game. When Henry V. was meditating war against the King of France, the old “Chronicle” tells us that “The Dolphyn thynkyng Henry to be still given to such plaies and follies as he exercised before the tyme that he was exalted to the croune, sent hym a tunne of tennis balles to plaie with, as he saied that he had better skill of tennis than of warre.” Shakspere makes Henry reply to the ambassador who brought the gift and message:

While Henry received the ambassadors, James I. of Scotland lost his life, it may be said, through his devotion to tennis. While holding the Yuletide festival at Perth, conspirators attacked the castle. The king tore up a plank in the flooring of the room where he was, and dropped into a vault below the apartment, where it was thought escape would be easy. There had been an opening by which he might have escaped, but this had, a few days earlier, been closed by his own orders, because the balls by which he played at tennis were apt to drop into it.

When we reach the reigns of the fourth and fifth Jameses of Scotland, we find from the accounts of the lord high treasurer many evidences of the kings’ fondness for this game and the considerable sums they lost at it.

Henry VII., as the register of his expenditures shows, was a tennis player.

The fifth Scottish James was so devoted to pastimes of all sorts that all his leisure was devoted to amusements, and naturally his people followed his example, especially his fondness for tennis: even the friars caught the fever, for Lyndesay draws us a picture, probably common in that age:

The game is traced in English history to Henry VIII., who was very fond of it. It is said by a historian: “His propensity being perceived by certayne craftie persons, they brought in Frenchmen and Lombards to make wagers with hym; and so he lost muche money, but when he perceyved theyr crafte he escheued their company and let them go.” Though devoted to the game, the bluff old king passed a stringent act against the keeping of any tennis-court, and against the enjoyment of several games by apprentices, mariners, artificers, and many others. This was only repealed in 1863. The Reformation gave the game a shock, especially in Scotland. During the Commonwealth the exiled court played the game abroad. At the Restoration Charles reintroduced the game, and probably the next few years were the palmy days of tennis in England. In 1664, we learn from Pepys’ diary, that the gossipy secretary had been watching the king at tennis, but was disgusted with the flattery bestowed upon him. He says: “I went to the tennis-court and there saw the king play at tennis. To see how the king’s play was extolled, without any excuse at all, was a loathsome sight, though sometimes he did indeed play very well, but such open flattery is beastly.”

During the last century the records of tennis are meagre: it seems to have been played in only one or two places. Even in England it may be said that tennis as a popular game went out with the Stuarts. Of course the pastime has never actually died out, and in recent years it has had increased attention paid to it, but even now the number of courts does not appear to exceed a score. “Tennis,” says the Edinburgh Review, “the most perfect of games, because with the most continuous certainty it exercises and rewards all the faculties of the player, has only been prevented hitherto from becoming as popular as it deserves from its being, under its original conditions, so expensive, so difficult to learn, and so puzzling to count, as to discourage those who are not ‘to the manner born,’ from touching it.” The first objection of expense seemed almost insuperable, the cost of a tennis-court being from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, until the recent revival turned the game out to grass, and introduced its rudiments to our lawns. Lawn-tennis, however, like the croquet, which it drove off the lawn, is not a new form of tennis. It is at least three centuries old.