go-carts, teetotums, and the like, which our readers will agree with us are not to be included among sports for sturdy English boys, being at best only fit to amuse the baby, and therefore to be considered as mere

NOTE ON OLD ENGLISH GAMES.

BELIEVING that our young readers may feel some interest in the games and sports practised on holidays by their ancestors in the olden times, we think it right to add a few words on that subject, as a supplement to our little epitome of the games played at the present day. The particulars are taken from that valuable work, Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," to which all writers on English games, and we ourselves among the number, have so repeatedly to refer.

The first rustic holiday we have to notice is "Plough Monday;" the first Monday after Twelfth Day. This was pre-eminently the ploughmen's day of jolification; and a plough used to be dragged about from house to house by a number of rustics, some of them as fantastically bedizened as the sweeps at a May-day show. One of them wore a woman's gown over his other clothes, and was called "Bessy," another impersonated the clown, and the rest had wooden swords. A rough dance was performed before each house, and money was demanded for drink. In the event of refusal, the threshold of the parsimonious farmer was sometimes ploughed up by the unruly band; but that was in the more turbulent times of "lang syne.'

Shrovetide, the time when the people confessed to the priests, and were shriven or shrove, was a great season of festivity, and many were the games and pranks then enacted; witness the good old song, quoted by Shakespeare, which tells us

""Twas merry in the hall, when the beards wagged all,

To welcome merry Shrovetide."

Cockfighting was one of the sports much practised at Shrovetide-a barbarous amusement, which has now happily fallen into disuse.

Easter time was a great season, in which the natural lightheartedness of the people, freed from the restraints of Lent, broke out wildly in the form of amusements of all kinds: wrestling, archery, football, and especially playing at hand-ball for tansy-cakes. In Heath's description of the Scilly Islands, written a hundred years since, it is told how the young people used "to exercise a sort of gallantry, called goose dancing, when the maidens are dressed up for young men, and the young men for maidens; thus disguised, they visit their neighbours in companies, where they dance, and make jokes

upon what has happened in the island; when every one is humorously told their own faults without offence being taken. By this sort of sport, according to yearly custom and toleration, there is a spirit of wit and drollery kept up amongst the people. When the music and dancing is done, they are treated with liquor, and then they go to the next house of entertainment." Hock-day, or Hoke-day, was the third Tuesday after Easter-day. It was a popular holiday, celebrated with games and sports, and was sometimes called binding Tuesday," from a quaint custom practised among the townspeoplethe women tying the men's feet with ropes. This is said to have had some reference to the servitude of the Saxons under the Norman rule; and the donations made on Hock-day to the church were said to be thank-offerings for deliverance from thraldom. Some writers consider the holiday to have had a more ancient origin, and that it was kept in remembrance of the deliverance from Danish thraldom at the death of Hardicanute, on Tuesday, June 8th, 1041, and the restoration of the Saxon line. In the seventeenth century, the old holiday ceased to be observed, like many other popular festivals-more's the pity.

May-day celebrations, and May games, though much more ancient in origin than British history, were diligently followed by our ancestors. Morrice dancers with "bell at heel," joculators and jesters, hobby horses, Marians, dragons, and king Arthurs, made up the motley pageant; and the dance round the May pole was as much an institution as archery or the forest laws, or Magna Charta. "On the calends, or first of May," said Bourne, an old writer, "commonly called May-day, the youth of both sexes were wont to rise a little after midnight, and walk to some neighbouring wood, accompanied with music, and blowing of horns, where they break down branches from the trees, and adorn them with nosegays and crowns of flowers." Many London parishes had their May poles. Those of St. Andrew Undershaft and of the Strand were especially famous; the big May pole of St. Andrew Undershaft was annually set up in Cornhill. On the 30th of May, in the year 1557, the fourth year of Queen Mary, "was a goodly May game in Fenchurch Street, with drums, and guns, and pikes; and with the nine worthies, who rode, and each of them made his speech; there was also a morrice dance, and an elephant and castle, and the Lord and Lady of the May appearing to make up the show." Robin Hood and Maid Marian were noted characters in the May games, which have now degenerated into a dingy exhibition by a few mock sweeps, and a man in a basket of laurel.

Whitsuntide, or Pentecost, was another time of rejoicing; whitsun ales, or feasts, being celebrated throughout the country.

On St. John's eve, bonfires were lighted, and processions formed. The setting of the watch, in London, on Midsummer eve was an important pageant, and certain superstitious ceremonies were also practised.

Many were the other feasts celebrated by our ancestors; St. Clement's and St. Catherine's day, in November, had each its procession. Sheepshearing and harvest home were farmers' feasts, as they still continue, to some extent, to be. The sports practised among the rustics were of a rough and ready character: hunting the pig, sack running, smock races, wheelbarrow racing, grinning matches, the eating of hot hasty pudding, being part of the entertainment. The Christmas festivities, to describe which would require a separate volume, with the Lord of Misrule, the yule log, and other quaint ceremonies, appropriately closed the year; and with the wassail bowl before them on New Year's Eve, our ancestors used to begin a new year, as we would begin a new department, with

GOOD WISHES TO ALL.

THUS said Sir William Forrest, an old writer, in a poem indited more than three hundred years ago, on the subject of the education an heir to the crown royal of England ought to receive; for in those times the education of the bodily powers was considered of equal importance with the cultivation of the mind; and even a hundred years afterwards, a writer named Burton, giving a list of the pursuits of the young people of his time, says: "Ringing, bowling, shooting, playing with pins, tronks, coits, pitching of bars, hurling, wrestling, leaping, running, fencing, mustering, swimming, playing with wasters, foils, footballs, balloons, running at the quintain, and the like, are common recreations of country folks." Many of these old practices have gone out of use; but we wish now to give our young readers as clear an insight as we can into two of them, which we consider of permanent importance-namely, Gymnastics and the Art of Swimming.

Of the latter we shall have to treat a few pages further on. Concerning Gymnastics we have now to offer a few preliminary remarks; for there is in many quarters a prejudice against gymnastic exercisos, as being likely to develop the body at the expense of the mind, and to inspire young people with too great a love of restless exercise, and an objectionable desire for the performance of feats. To such arguments we can only reply that the same may be used against boating, fencing, riding, or any of the amusements of youth. It is the excess, not the practice, of gymnastics, that is to be avoided; and if to this caution against the abuse of a healthful and invigorating exercise, be added the necessary measure of practising gymnastics under the watchful eye and the careful superintendence of some competent teacher, the result may be looked forward to with confidence, in an increase of strength and efficiency in the learner, and, consequently, an enlargement of his capacity for enjoyment and usefulness.

That it must be useful for a boy to have his bodily powers well under his control, to know how far those powers extend, and what he may attempt and what he may not, can scarcely be called in question. Fancy two youths dwelling in the same house alarmed by a cry of fire; there is no escape but by the window, and the room is at some distance from the ground. The boy who has been trained in the gymnasium will be in a condition to avail himself of any means that may be at hand for escape. With a firm grasp and a certain knowledge of what he has to attempt, he will slide down a waterspout, or let himself down from the window, by means of his bed-clothes twisted in the form of a rope; or he will spring with steady head from one window-sill to another; or, having climbed down some distance, will drop the rest, without fear of accident. He has gone through all these, or very similar manœuvres, many times, in the gymnasium, and they offer no perils to him; while his untrained companion, though perhaps the stronger of the two, will stand trembling and hesitating on the window-sill, wanting trust in his untried powers, and either depending helplessly on the assistance of others, or perhaps lamentably injuring himself in the attempt to accomplish a leap or a feat he has never tried, until this overpowering necessity drove him to it. Or, suppose two such youths in a chaise or carriage of any kind, when the horse has taken fright and run away. The gymnast will know, if he attempts to leap out, how such an attempt must be made, and how he may best break the force of the impetus with which he will be sent against the hard road. He has perhaps practised the feat of leaping from a swing when in motion, and if so, the feat he has to perform will not be anything very formidable; he will spring lightly out, with his face turned towards the horse, and at the worst, come down on his hands and knees; or he will let himself gently down at the back of the carriage. But it is ten to one if his untrained companion do not jump out sideways, perhaps to meet with an accident like that which deprived the Duke of Orleans, the lamented son of the late Louis Philippe, of life. In short, not to multiply instances, that man only whose bodily powers are thoroughly developed, and who well understands how to apply those powers in time of danger and difficulty, is in a position to use the means Providence has given him for self-preservation; and to attain this position, a gymnastic training of some kind is almost indispensable.

Among the ancients, gymnastic exercises were necessarily invested with more importance than would be accorded to them in modern civilised communities: indeed, physical education required so much time, that it in many instances usurped the place of mental culture. Every age, from childhood to the decline of life, had its separate set of exercises, the most arduous feats being of course apportioned to the strongest time of youth. The Greeks especially seem to have been deeply impressed with the idea that a really healthy mind was only to be found in corpore sano, in a healthy body.

Among the Greeks, the gymnasia were public establishments, under the guardianship and supervision of proper officers, the chief of whom, the gymnasiarch, exercised control over all the rest. The exercises were of two kinds: firstly, simple games, with balls and other implements; and secondly, the more serious exercises sometimes exhibited in public, including foot races, throwing the discus or the javelin, jumping with the hands free or loaded with different weights, and wrestling. Pugilistic contests, in which the combatants covered their hands and arms with a kind of leather gauntlet, were also undertaken.

The Romans adopted a good deal of the gymnastic system of the Greeks, though they did not set up their gymnasia with anything like such systematic ideas of training, or of a regular sequence of exercises. They certainly considered it very important that bodily strength and agility should be developed; but all their exercises had one aim and tendency, and that was to make pupils good soldiers. The elder Tarquin caused a building to be erected, in which the young Romans practised gymnastics. Before that time, the exercises had been carried on in an inclosed space, bounded by palisades, and on one side by the Tiber. The habitual practice of these pursuits from day to day hardened the Roman warrior, inured him to fatigue, made him patient

!

under privation, thirst, and heat, and mainly contributed to form and develop in him those marvellous powers of endurance, which for a long period secured to the Roman armies the empire of the world.

Athletic sports and gymnastic exercises were much practised among the Anglo-Saxons in England; and the Normans, far from discountenancing the practice, fostered it, introducing new games and feats, such as the quintain; and it was usual during the Anglo-Norman period to conclude every great tournament with a "people's day," as one set apart for athletic sportsracing, wrestling, quarter-staff, and other athletic pursuits, in which the peasants and yeomen contended with each other for prizes. Chaucer, the poet, tells us of a doughty miller (in the prologue to the "Canterbury Tales"), who was accustomed to win the ram, the usual prize for wrestling. He says of this champion

"For over al ther he cam,

At wrastling he wolde have away the ram: "

and that the prizes were sometimes varied and important, we learn from another poem, describing a "wrastling," to which congregated "all the best yemen of all the west countrey." The poet goes on to say :

"A full fayre game there was set up;

A white bull, up ypyght;

A great courier with sadle and brydle,
With gold burnished full bryght:

"A payre of gloves, a red gold ringe,
A pipe of vine, good faye;
What man bereth him best y wis,
The prize shall bear away.'

With the invention of gunpowder athletic sports began to decline. Personal strength and prowess became of less value in war than strategy and generalship; for a bullet would kill a giant and a weakling with equal certainty, and the deadly missiles shot from guns could not be parried like sword or lance thrusts, or caught on stout shields like arrows. It was not until the present century that a revival of these exercises took place, beginning in Germany and France, and spreading thence to England. On the Continent, the practice of gymnastic exercises advanced gradually and surely, until the gymnastic ground became a recognised institution in every town, and athletic exercises an important part of the education of almost every youth; in England, a great enthusiasm was at first created, but a reaction shortly afterwards set in, and gymnastics fell for a time into desuetude. The fact was, that too much was attempted at once. Certain mountebanks, calling themselves professors, incited their pupils to undertake dangerous and injudicious feats. Some accidents occurred, and a prejudice was excited among people, who did not consider that there is not a pursuit which youth can follow which may not be liable to abuse. Now that the subject is better understood, the interest in gymnastics is gradually but surely reviving. Several public gymnasia, like that at the Regent's Park, have been erected, and are steadily and perseveringly patronised by English boys. Considering the subject of gymnastics as one of importance in many points of view, we have, as will be seen, given it a somewhat prominent position among the pursuits of boys, treated of in this little work.

A short extract from an admirable report made to the French Government, by M. Berard, the president of a commission appointed to consider the advisableness of introducing gymnastics into the lyceums, colleges, and public schools generally in France, as a part of the education given there, will explain our views on the matter in a few words; and then, without detaining our young friends with further preliminary matter, we shall proceed to put them through a short course of gymnastics, on paper, which we hope they will repeat in reality. First of all, it must be remembered, that the object of the gymnastie exercises in the said public schools is not by any means to make athletes, or what may be called "muscle men" of the pupils, or to teach them the performance of acrobatic feats. M. Berard's report particularly notices this