tinction; so that it was a saying among the Welsh, "you may know a gentleman by his hawk,† horse, and greyhound." Evn the ladies in those days were partakers of this gallant sport, and have been represented in sculpture with hawks on their hands. -See Bewick's British Birds, vol. i. p. 26. It is recorded that a falcon belonging to a duke of Cleves, flew out of Westphalia into Prussia in one day; and in the county of Norfolk, a hawk has made a flight at a woodcock near thirty miles in an hour. Some of the larger kind have been taught to fly at the wild boar and the wolf. With this view, they should be accustomed to feed, when young, from out of the sockets of the eyes of a wolf or boar's head, the whole skin of the animal being stuffed, so as to make it appear alive. While the bird is feeding, the falconer begins to move the figure gradually, in consequence of which, the bird learns to fasten itself so as to stand firm, notwithstanding the precipitate motions which are gradually given to the stuffed animal; he would lose his meat if he quitted his hold, and therefore he takes care to secure himself. When these first exercises are finished, the skin is placed on a cart, drawn by a horse at full speed; the bird follows it, and is particularly eager in feeding; and then, when they come to fly him in the field, he never fails to dart on the first beast of the kind he discovers, and begins to scoop out the eyes. This puts the animal to such distress, that the hunters have time to approach and dispatch it with their spears. This species of inhuman education would be more honoured in the breach than the observance. The grand seignor usually keeps 6,000 falconers in his service. The French king had a grand falconer.

The duke of St. Alban's is hereditary Grand Falconer of England. St. Alban's seems to have been a favourite place for hawking. Shakspeare says,

"Ride unto St. Alban's,

Where the king and queen do mean to hawk.”

And at this place was printed, by Caxton, a Treatise on Hunting, Hawking, and Heraldry. Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, mentions an historical fact, related by Hall, who informs us that Henry VIII., pursuing his hawk on foot, at Hitchen, in Hertfordshire, attempted, with the assistance of his pole, to jump over a ditch that was half full of muddy water; the pole broke, and the king fell with his head into the mud, where he would have been stifled, had not a footman, named John Moody, who was near at hand, and seeing the accident, leaped into the ditch, and released his majesty from his perilous situation; "and so," says the honest historian, " God in hys goodnesse preserved him."

*See Origin of St. Alban's family.

"It can be no more disgrace to a great lord to draw a fair picture, than to cut his hawk's meat."-Peacham.

SWANS.

Swans were first brought into England by Richard I., from Cyprus. It is a bird that has ever been held in great esteem in England, and by an act of Edward IV., none except the son of a king was permitted to keep one, unless possessed of five marks a year; and by a subsequent act, taking their eggs, in like manner as those of the hawk, was punished with imprisonment for a year and a day, and a fine at the king's will.

In Coke's Reports, part 7th, in the case of swans, it is remarked, "that he who stealeth a swan in an open and common river, lawfully marked, the same swan shall be hung in a house by the beak, and he who stole it shall, in recompence thereof, give to the owner so much wheat as may cover all the swan, by putting and turning the wheat upon the head of the swan, until the head of the swan be covered with wheat.'

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Black swans, it is ascertained, are any thing but uncommon at the Cape of Good Hope, and indeed may now be met with in various parts of England; so that the proverb, a black swan is a rare bird on the earth," is no longer applicable. In the Thames at present, the greatest number of Swans belong to the Queen, and the Companies of Vintners and Dyers own the next largest proportion; but the birds are far less numerous than they used to be. The swan marks are made upon the upper mandible with a knife or other sharp instrument. The swanhopping or upping, that is, the catching and taking up the swans to mark the cygnets, and renew that on the old birds if obliterated, in the presence of the Royal swans' herdsman, is still continued by the Companies above mentioned.

GAMING.

This vice is coeval with amusement, for, however trifling the stake, when the passions become excited, it has no bounds. Pernicious gambling may be said to have been introduced into England with cock-fighting, a notice of which follows this. To discharge their gambling debts, the Siamese sell their possessions, their families, and at length themselves. The Chinese play night and day, till they have lost all they are worth, and then they usually go and hang themselves.

Such is the propensity of the Japanese for high play, that they were compelled to make a law, that whoever ventures his money at play shall be put to death.

In the islands of the Pacific Ocean they venture even their hatchets, which they hold as invaluable acquisitions, on running matches. "We saw a man," as Cook writes in his last voyage, beating his breast, and tearing his hair, in the violence of rage, for having lost three hatchets at one of these races, and which he

had purchased with nearly half his property." A strong spirit of play characterises a Malayan. After having resigned every thing to the good fortune of the winner, he is reduced to a horrid state of desperation; he then loosens a certain lock of hair, which indicates war and destruction to all the raving gamester meets. He intoxicates himself with opium, and, working himself up to a fit of frenzy, he bites and kills all that comes in his way. But, as soon as ever this lock is seen flowing, it is lawful to fire at the person, and to destroy him as fast as possible. It is this which our sailors call "to run a muck." Thus Dryden writes:

"Frontless, and satire-proof, he scours the streets,
And runs an Indian Muck at all he meets."

The ancient nations were not less addicted to gaming. To notice the more modern ones were a melancholy task: there is hardly a family in Europe who cannot record, from their own domestic annals, the dreadful prevalence of this unfortunate passion. Affection has felt the keenest lacerations, and genius been irrecoverably lost, by a wanton sport, which dooms to destruction the hope of families, and consumes the heart of the gamester with corrosive agony.

"Accept this advice, you who sit down to play,

The best throw of the dice, is to throw them away."

COCK-FIGHTING.

Cock-fighting, as a sport, was derived from the Athenians, on the following occasion. When Themistocles was marching his army against the Persians, he, by the way, espying two cocks fighting, caused his army to stop, and addressed them as follows. "Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, nor for glory, nor for liberty, nor for the safety of their children, but only because the one will not give way to the other." This so encouraged the Grecians, that they fought strenuously, and obtained the victory over the Persians; upon which, cock-fighting was, by a particular law, ordained to be annually celebrated by the Athenians.

Cæsar mentions the English cocks in his Commentaries; but the earliest notice of cock-fighting in England is by Fitzstephens, who died 1191. He mentions this as one of the amusements of the Londoners, together with the game of foot-ball.

An ingenious writer says “" Cock-fighting is a despicable amusement, and plainly open to all the objections against boxing, without having any thing to say for itself. Cruelty and cowardice notoriously go together. In cock-fighting they are both at their height. If any body means to be convinced, let him look at Hogarth's picture of it, and the faces concerned. Would the gambler in that picture, the most absorbed in the hope of

winning, ever forget his own bones, as he does those of the brave animals before him? Cock-fighting has been in use among nations of great valour, our own for one; but it was the barbarous, and not the brave part of the national spirit that maintained it, and one that had not yet been led to think on the subject. Better knowledge puts an end to all excuses of that sort."

QUOITS,

This game, no doubt, is of great antiquity, and was known to the ancient Greeks; for we find in Homer's Iliad, at least in Pope's translation of it, book xxiii. line 973, the following:

"Then hurl'd the hero, thundering on the ground

A mass of iron (an enormous round),

Whose weight and size the circling Greeks admire,
Rude from the furnace, and but shaped by fire.
Let him whose might can hurl this bowl, arise,
Who further hurls it, take it as his prize."

FOOT-BALL.

Sir Frederick Morton Eden, in the Statistical Account of Scotland, says, that at Scone, in the county of Perth, the game of foot-ball is a prominent amusement; and that it is a proverb in this part of the country, "all is fair at the ball of Scone." Sir Frederick goes on to say, that this custom is supposed to have had its origin in the days of chivalry; when an Italian is reported to have come into this part of the country, challenging all the parishes, under a certain penalty in case of declining his challenge. All the parishes declined this challenge excepting Scone, which beat the foreigner, and in commemoration of this gallant action the game was instituted.

ORIGINS AND ANTIQUITY OF VARIOUS JUVENILE AMUSEMENTS.
"Children and youth engage my pen,
"Tis labour lost to write for men."

Trochus, in antiquity, denotes the exercise, or the game of the hoop. The hoop was of iron, five or six feet in diameter, set on the inside with a number of iron rings. The boys and young men used to whirl this along, as is now done at school with modern hoops, directing it with a rod of iron having a wooden handle, which the Romans called radius. The clattering of the rings served partly as a notice for persons to keep out of the way. Horace, in his Art of Poetry, mentions the hoop as one of the manly sports. Strutt says, the hoop is a pastime of uncertain origin, but much in practice at present, and especially in London, where the boys appear with their hoops in the public streets, and

are sometimes very troublesome to those who are passing through them. Addison says, I have seen at Rome an antique statue of time, with a wheel, or hoop, of marble in his hand.

Skipping. This amusement is probably very ancient. It is performed by a rope held by both ends; that is, one in each hand, and thrown forwards or backwards over the head and under the feet alternately. In the hop season, a hop-stem stripped of its leaves, is used instead of a rope. Boys often contend for skill in the game, and he who passes the rope about most times without interruption is the conqueror. This, also, was an amusement practised by the Romans.

The Top.-The Top was used in ancient days by the Grecian boys: it was also well known at Rome in the days of Virgil, and with us as early, at least, as the fourteenth century.

Duck and Drake. This is a very silly pastime, though inferior to few in point of antiquity. It is called, in Greek, epostrakismos, and was anciently played with flat shells, which the boys threw into the water, and he whose shell rebounded most frequently from the surface, before it finally sunk, was the conqueror.

Marbles.-Marbles seem to have been used by the boys as substitutes for bowls; formerly nuts and round stones were used.

It is said of Augustus, when young, that by way of amusement he spent many hours in playing with little Moorish boys, cum nucibus, with nuts.

Hopping, and Sliding on One Leg.-Hopping is derived from the Anglo-Saxon, hoppan, which signifies to leap, or dance. Hence, dancings are in the country called Hops. The word in its original meaning is preserved in Grasshopper.

These are both very innocent amusements, and were practised by the Grecian youth; one they called akinetinda, which was a struggle between the competitors who should stand longest motionless upon the sole of his foot; the other, denominated ascoliasmos, was dancing or hopping upon one foot; the conqueror being he who could hop the most frequently, and continue the performance longer than any of his comrades; and this pastime is alluded to by an English author in an old comedy, wherein a boy, boasting of his proficiency in various school games, adds,

"And I hop a good way upon my one legge."

Shuttlecock.-Shuttlecock is a boyish sport of long standing; it appears to have been a fashionable pastime among grown persons in the reign of James the First, and is mentioned as such in an old comedy, "The Two Maids of Moretlacke," printed A.D. 1609, of that time, wherein it is said, "To play at Shuttle-cock, methinks, is the game now." And among the anecdotes of Prince Henry, son to James the First, is the following: "His Highness playing at shittle-cocke with one far taller than himself, and