Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/68

Rh people have been legislated, educated, and governed into ignorance of all means of attack and defence, and of everything but work in the fields.

But within a few years the Irish people have begun resolutely to play the old heroic games of the Gael once more, as their English brothers had long gone back to the manly exercises of the Saxon.

In the first quarter of the last century, the arts of boxing, sword-play, and quarter-staff were beginning to attract public attention in Great Britain and Ireland. But these exercises were in an extremely rude condition. There was, especially for boxing, no unity of knowledge, no well-known teachers, no established rules. The idea of a national championship was not yet born.

X. THE FIRST MODERN CHAMPION BOXER. 1719 appears the first English pugilist who can be considered as a national champion. His name was James Figg. He had an "academy" for manly exercises in Tottenham Court Road, London.

Like all the boxing masters of that time, and