every muscle to break his weapon against the shield, that he might thus gain the prize, and avoid a severe ducking, the inevitable consequence of failure. Every precaution was used to prevent drowning on these occasions, and Fitz-Stephen says their immersion caused infinite meriment to the spectators.

THE QUINTAIN, mentioned by Stowe, had its origin from a whimsical idea, and those who practised with it were compelled to exert no trifling degree of agility to avoid the heavy blows it inflicted. In this instance, a strong post was placed erect in the ground, on which was a piece of wood, turned by means of a spindle; at one extremity a bag of sand was suspended, and the other presented a surface sufficiently broad to make it practicable to strike it with a spear when on full gallop on horseback; the pressure from the spear caused an instantaneous whirl of the wood, which was increased by the weight of the sand, and that saluted the back of the horseman in no very gentle manner, if the speed of his courser happened to be less than that of the quintain. So "that hee," says our author, that hit not the broad end of the quinten, was of all men laughed to scorn; and hee that hit it full, if he rid not the faster, had a sound blow in his necke with a bagge full of sand hanged on the other end." A more costly and elaborate machine, resembling an armed human figure, and which required still superior agility in attacking it, is alluded to by Shakspeare in As You Like It," where Orlando

"Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth ;" and it continued to amuse our rustic forefathers for more than a century afterwards. It is supposed to have given origin to

TILTS AND TOURNAMENTS, w which being more elegant and splendid in their costume, superseded it during the prevalence of chivalry. These were the most dignified and expensive of all entertainments, and for that reason were confined to princes, barons, and knights, as even the esquires were forbidden to enter the lists at them. A modern can hardly imagine the interest and splendour of these martial exhibitions, which, in many respects, equalled, and in some excelled, those of the Roman Circus. The area of the Tournament was the theatre on which emperors, kings, and their nobles of every rank, who were knights, contended for the prize due to superior skill in arms; and when we consider that the spectators, both male and female, were composed of all that was powerful, honourable, and beautiful, from every part of Europe, we may readily conceive the magnificence of the scene, the polished armour, the dazzling display 'of rich silks, embroidered with gold and silver, and the jewellery of the ladies.

One of the methods contrived to amuse the domestic hours of the monarch and his court in these times, and which continued, in fact, long afterwards, was the custom of retaining

FOOLS OR JESTERS.-This kind of amusement was, according to the opinion of a late writer, the device of some sage politician, who, originally deceiving his king by presenting him with a supposed fool to bear every indignity of language, procured in reality a shrewd fellow, whose inclination and abilities rendered him competent to censure and ridicule all the vices and follies around him with impunity. Since the custom of retaining a person bearing the outward appearance of idiotism has been discontinued in the Court of England, and in the houses of great men, we are at a loss to conjecture how it

could have continued from the Norman times (Rayhere being minstrel or jester to Henry I.) until James I., whose jester, Archee, published his Book of Jests," and was, no doubt, a very shrewd fellow. The manners of the higher ranks, it has been observed, were certainly very different from their present polished state, as we now with difficulty bear the absurdities of a clown in a pantomime. These fools, who wore a particoloured or motley dress, are frequently mentioned in Shakspeare's dramas, and the office is still remembered in the vulgar term of "the Lord Mayor's fool."

DANCING. Sir Thomas Elyot, in his work called "The Governour," written in the reign of Henry VIII., traces the history of this amusement with great ability, and, after describ. ing many modes of dancing, adds, "Instead of these, we have now base dances, bargenettes, panyons, turgyons, and rounds. And as for the special names, they were taken as they be now, either of the names of the first inventors, or of the measure and number which they do contain; or of the first words of the ditty which the song comprehendeth whereof the dance was made. In every of the said dances, there was a concinnity of moving the foot and body, expressing some pleasant or profitable effects or motions of the mind." In proceeding, he contrives to extract a moral from every step in dancing, which we learn from himn was invariably commenced in his days by a low reverence from the whole party, with a long interval between it and the first step.

An odd way of amusing themselves and the spectators of their follies, was practised anciently by persons who styled themselves Mummers, the method of whose proceeding is partly explained in the following passage of an act of parliament of the reign of Henry VIII:-" Forasmuch as lately within this realm divers persons have disguised and apparelled themselves, and covered themselves with visors and other things in such manner as they should not be known; and divers

of them in a company together, naming themselves Mummers, have come to the dwelling place of divers men of honour and substantial persons, and so departed unknown; whereupon murders, felony, rape, and other great hurts and inconveniences have aforetime grown, and hereafter be like to come by, if the said disorder should continue not reformed." This act levied a fine and three months' imprisonment on future offenders, and decreed a penalty of 22s. for the sale of a single mask. It is extremely probable that the Mummer was a product of Italy; and, were we inclined to penetrate into past ages, we might possibly discover him on the Roman stage, where the actor invariably appeared in distorted mask, though, perhaps, otherwise habited in the character he represented.

In the reign of James I. and his successor, according to Burton, some of the amusements of our citizens, and their ladies particularly, were derived from monkeys and a diminutive breed of dogs; and those of winter arose from cards, tables, and dice, shovel-board, chess, the philosopher's game, small trunks, shuttle-cock, billiards, music, masks, singing, dancing, ule games, frolics, jests, riddles, catches, purposes, questions and commands, merry tales of knights errant, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters, witches, fairies, goblins, friars, &c. "Some men's whole delight also," he adds, "is to take tobacco, and drink all day long in a tavern or alehouse, to discourse, sing, jest, roar, talk of a cock and a bull over a pot, &c.; or when three or four good companions meet, tell old stories by the fire-side, or in the sun, as old folks usually do, quæ aprici meminere senes, remembering afresh, and with pleasure, ancient matters, and such like accidents as happened to them in their younger years."

TENNIS was a great amusement of the reign of Charles II., and one at which his Majesty himself frequently played. A newspaper of 1680 tells its readers, that "on Tuesday morn

tion of the poem, but subjoin a passage from the preface, to shew the tone of the composition :

"The person who crawled for his portrait in the following sketch, has no excuse for the malignity of his very mediocre pretensions and slavish success. He is no inexperienced youth; nor is he poor in his old age. He has grown grey, yet he has not grown wiser. He has endured sickness and melancholy, yet they have not made him humane. The young he has treated as if he had never wanted encouragement himself, nor found it. The delicate of health he has not spared, though his own hand shook that struck them. It is said I attacked him first. It is not true. He attacked a woman. He struck, in her latter days, at the crutches of poor Mary Robinson-a human being, who was twenty times as good as himself, and whose very lameness (that last melancholy contradiction to qualities of heart and person, which he might well envy) was owing to a spirit of active kindness which he never possessed. The blow was bound to make every manly cheek tingle; and I held up the little servile phoenomenon in the "Feast of the Poets." For this, and for attacking powerful Princes instead of their discarded mistresses, he has never forgiven me. My first notice of him was in his praise: to which, if I mistake not, I owe the importunate requests which Mr. Murray made me to write in the Quarterly Review. I was then a youth, and knew his writings only piecemeal. I did not write in the Quarterly Review; and I soon acquired knowledge enough to sound the shallow depths of the editor. Hinc illæ lachrymæ. Hence the "misquoting" criticism on the story of Rimini. Hence, and for no other cause, his unfeeling attack on Mr. Keats; for extraordinary genius was calculated merely to perplex him. Hence, in some measure, his unchristian hatred and misrepresentation of the christian temper of Mr. Shelley: for if ever faith and charity were separate, it was in the persons of these

two men. Mr. Gifford's faith delights in scorning charity, and extinguishing hope."

The only thing of Hunt's that Gifford ever had the justice to praise, is, we believe, the following beautiful poem which appeared in the volume entitled "Foliage." We make no apology for reprinting it here, nor can it be necessary for us to dilate upon its merit. Every father or mother that has watched beside the pillow of a sick child will appreciate and enter into the beauty of its sentiments, without any comment of ours: the fifth verse appears to us to be the perfection of natural feeling happily expressed :

To T. L. HUNT.

SIX YEARS OLD, DURING A LATE

SICKNESS.

SLEEP breathes at last from out thee,
My little, patient Boy;
And balmy rest about thee
Smooths off the day's annoy.

I sit me down, and think
Of all thy winning ways;
Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink,
That I had less to praise.

Thy sidelong pillowed meekness,
Thy thanks to all that aid,
Thy heart, in pain and weakness,
Of fancied faults afraid;

The little trembling hand
That wipes thy quiet tears,
These, these are things that may demand
Dread memories for years,

Sorrows I've had, severe ones
I will not think of now;
And calmly, midst my dear ones,
Have wasted with dry brow;

But when thy fingers press
And pat my stooping head,
I cannot bear the gentleness,—
The tears are in their bed.

MONTGOMERY, who, for one and thirty years had conducted the "Sheffield Iris," concluded his editorial labours with an address which forms an interesting, though rather general and brief memorial of his life. We extract the following passages; one, evincing that modesty which forms a distinguishing and pleasing feature of Mr. M's. character; the other, referring to one of the most eventful periods of his political career :

"From the first moment that I became the director of a public Journal, I took my own ground; I have stood upon it through many years of changes, and I rest by it this day, as having afforded me a shelter through the far greater portion of my life, and yet offering me a grave, when I shall no longer have a part in any thing done under the sun. And this was my ground,-a plain determination, come wind or sun, come fire or flood, to do what was right. I lay stress on the purpose, not the performance, for this was the polar star to which my compass pointed, though with considerable "variation of the needle." Through characteristic weakness, perversity of understanding, or self-sufficiency, I have often erred, failed, and been overcome by temptation, on the wearisome pilgrimage through which I have toiled,- -now struggling through the Slough of Despond, then fighting with evil spirits in the Valley of Humiliation, more than once escaping martyrdom from Vanity Fair, and once, at least, (I will not say when,) a prisoner in

Doubting Castle, under the discipline of Giant Despair. Now, though I am not writing this Address in one of the shepherds' tents on the Delectable Mountains, yet, like Christian, from that situation, I can look back on the past, with all its anxieties, trials, and conflicts,-thankful that it is the past. Of the future I have little foresight, and I desire none with respect to this life, being content that " shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it," if I yet may hope, that " at even-tide there will be light." But I must return to times gone by.

"At the commencement of my career, twice in the course of twelve months, I was sentenced to fine and imprisonment for imputed offences.' I choose to quote these words from the preface to the first volume, in which I appeared as an Author. I can now add, that all the persons who were actively concerned in the prosecutions against me in 1794 and 1795 are dead, and, without exception, they died in peace with me." I believe 1 am quite correct in saying, that from each of them distinctly, in the sequel, I received tokens of good will, and from several of them substantial proofs of kindness. I mention not this as a plea in extenuation of offences for which I bore the penalties of the law; I rest my justification now on the same grounds, and no other, on which I rested my justification then. I mention the circumstance to the honour of the deceased, and, as an evidence, that, amidst all the violence of that distracted time, a better spirit was not extinct, but finally prevailed, and by its healing influence, did, indeed, comfort those who had been conscientious sufferers. Such, at least, was my experience, and gratitude to God and man required this testimony from me, when the motives from which it is given cannot be suspected."

The

Iris" has fallen into the hands of a respectable bookseller; and, it is probable, will be still occasionally enriched with an article from the pen of Montgomery.