tide the boys of every school bring fighting-cocks to their masters, and all the forenoon is spent at school to see those cocks fight together."

With the close of the seventeenth century may be said to have also departed the old popular sports of England. The May-day amusements had then entirely disappeared, unless we may consider as exceptions the "superstitious" bathers in the dew before mentioned, the milk-maids who danced some time longer with their pails hung round with wreaths of flowers, or the sweeps in all their dusky splendour, who continue dancing still. People now, instead of hurrying forth at sun-rise to Greenwich and Shooter's Hill, repaired at a more fashionable hour to the velvet lawns and shady avenues of Spring Gardens, or went at sun-set to Ranelagh and Vauxhall, to enjoy their music, fire-works, and water-works, their wonderful mechanism, their extraordinary cascades, and their trees with thousands of lamps glowing as resplendently as Aladdin's famous fruit in the cave. The archers' meetings had then given place to shooting-matches, of the kind described in an advertisement of the period: "A stall-fed fat deer to be shot for at the Greyhound in Islington, on Wednesday in Whitsun week, for half a crown a man; forty men to shoot." Then bowls, which had usurped the place of archery in the popular estimation, saw itself in course of being thrust aside by skittles. The ball games had merged into cricket, which was then played by the 'prentices in the porches of Covent Garden. This excellent sport, now the only generally popular one we possess, has one feature deserving especial notice; we allude to that social admixture of all classes, from the nobleman to the ploughman, sometimes exhibited in the array of players of the different clubs, even in places like Hampstead Heath, but much more commonly in the rural districts of England. Lastly, it was about this period that quarter-staff and wrestling changed into single-stick and prize-fights. The principal weapons at this latter amusement were broad-sword, and sword and dagger; and the combatants were persons who engaged in it as a regular trade, supporting themselves by the subscription purses which occasionally rewarded their exertion, and by the more regular fees paid for admission. Many of these men rambled about the country like so many knights-errant, seeking adventures, and making the quiet little country villages resound again with their boasting challenges. Here is a picture of a prizefight in London:-Seats filled and crowded by two, drums beat, dogs yelp, butchers and foot-soldiers clatter their sticks; at last the two heroes, in their finebosomed holland shirts, mount the stage about three; cut large collops out of one another to divert the mob, and make work for the surgeons; smoking, swearing, drinking, thrusting, justling, elbowing, sweating, kicking, cuffing, all the while the company stays. In the early part of the eighteenth century, Figg, the immortalized of Hogarth, who had previously taught the use of the singlestick and small-sword, began to give lessons in boxing, which soon became the great popular amusement of the people of London. It was encouraged by the magistrates, with the idea of its tending to produce a general manliness of character; and patronised by the great on account of its affording a new opportunity of gratifying their taste for gambling. The Duke of Cumberland, the hero of Culloden, lost some thousands of pounds by the defeat of Broughton, one of the chief pugilists of the day. The challenges of these gentry were, at this time, regularly

published in the daily prints; and a few striking specimens of their flowery eloquence and modesty might be culled from those sources. The following is but a mild specimen :-" Whereas I, William Willis, commonly called by the name of the fighting Quaker, have fought Mr. Smallwood about twelve months since, and held him the tightest to it, and bruised and battered more than any one he ever encountered, though I had the ill fortune to be beat by an accidental fall; the said Smallwood, flushed with the success blind Fortune then gave him, and the weak attempts of a few vain Irishmen and boys, that have of late fought him for a minute or two, makes him think himself unconquerable; to convince him of the falsity of which I invite him to fight me for one hundred pounds, at the time and place above mentioned, when I doubt not I shall prove the truth of what I have asserted by pegs, darts, hard blows, falls, and cross-buttocks." "Blind Fortune" still refused to open her eyes. The fighting Quaker was again vanquished. We have dwelt somewhat upon this subject not merely because it so long and deeply interested the people of London, but also because of the contrast it presents to the delightful amusements of the same people two centuries earlier. Happily it no longer attracts its thousands of spectators. The pickpockets, whether on or off the stages of these disgusting exhibitions, seek elsewhere, rather than in the pleasant meadows of the counties around London, for a profitable sphere of exertion. Pugilism is gone, bull and bear baiting are gone, cock-fighting is gone. We have then nothing to undo, however much there may be to do in the way of establishing sports worthy of the epithet National. The first step from the popular sports was the shutting up and building over the old places fitted for their exercise; may not the last to them be the re-opening of new ones? A general desire now exists among all classes for open public places and walks, and some individuals have nobly distinguished themselves by providing them. Lord Holland gave the public one place near Ampthill but two or three years since; Mr. Strutt another, still more recently, at Derby; and it is said the Duke of Norfolk has announced his intention of following their example at Sheffield. In London, the Regent's Park has been for some time partially thrown open. An entirely new park is also about to be formed for the East of London; and lastly, Primrose-hill has been already purchased, and rendered the property of the people for ever. From walking in these places to playing in them (at certain times and under certain regulations of course) will be no very difficult transition. Would there be less delight or more evil in seeing the countless thousands of our hard-working population flocking into the Regent's or Hyde Park to play at cricket, to run, or to leap, than, as at present, to skate? or in making holidays depend upon a less precarious authority than the weather? The feeling which chokes up our bridge-ways with eager faces, till they overflow the very parapets, to look at a boat-race, requires but a fair opportunity of development to produce an incalculable amount of innocent enjoyment. Let that opportunity be afforded, and we do not despair of seeing "Merry England" more than ever deserve that name; or that the time shall come when every man will, as of old, "walk into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice his spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the noise of birds, praising God in their kind,”*

* Stow.

on each May-day; or when London shall again present some such refreshing glimpses of a happy population as that here shown. The modes in which a spirit of enjoyment develops itself are, of course, transitory; but the spirit itself, when once awakened, is permanent, and creates for itself modes adapted to the character of an age. What the working population have been accustomed to waste in gross excitements would buy them many holidays of innocent, and manly, and tasteful pleasures.

AN account of the Parks of London is an amusing and not unimportant chapter of the history of national manners since the Restoration; and it even affords glimpses of popular and fashionable amusement during the stormy period of the Commonwealth.

All

Stewart Rose, in his delightful Letters from the North of Italy,' playfully alluding to the disregard of salads and pot-herbs shown by the people among whom he was residing, mentions a purpose of migrating for a few weeks to a town somewhat further to the north with the object of procuring "brouse." healthy stomachs feel a craving for "brouse" occasionally, in addition to bread and meat: one can almost fancy an intellectual scurvy being the consequence of too long an abstinence from spinach, greens, and lettuce. This mysterious sympathy between the soul and the principle of vegetation appears also in the universal inclination to take pleasure in looking at green fields. A pleasing example of this universal taste is mentioned in Mountstuart Elphinstone's 'Account of the City of Kabul:'-" The people have a great many amusements, the most considerable of which arise from their passion for what they call sail (enjoyment of prospects); every Friday all shops are shut, and every man comes from the bath, dressed in his best clothes, and joins one of the parties which are always made for this day, to some hill or garden near the town; a little subscription procures

P

an ample supply of provisions, sweetmeats, and fulodeh (a jelly strained from boiled wheat, and eaten with the expressed juice of fruit, and ice); and for a small sum paid at the garden, each man has the liberty to eat as much fruit as he pleases. They go out in the morning, and eat their luncheon at the garden, and spend the day in walking about, eating fruit off the trees, smoking, playing at backgammon, and other games, and listening to the singing and playing of musicians, hired by a trifling subscription." So, after all, these far-away people, so different in features, complexion, and faith, seek their enjoyments from the same sources with ourselves, as their necessities impress upon them a somewhat similar routine of toil. The citizens of Kabul have pretty nearly the same tastes as the badauds of Paris, or our own Cockneys, to say nothing of graver or more genteel personages.

The universality of this taste accounts for European governments (the prudent or the benevolent ones) having so often sought to keep their subjects in good humour by throwing open to them, that they might indulge in the "enjoyment of prospects," the parks and gardens of the sovereign. That eminent antiquary, Mr. William Shakspere, mentions a very early case-Mark Anthony's successful use of this device, when, to win over the Roman citizens from the party of Brutus and Cassius to that of the friends of Cæsar, he told them that the Dictator had bequeathed to them

"All his walks,

His private arbours, and new-planted orchards,
On that side Tiber; he hath left them you,

And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures,

To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves."

The popularity attending such a measure accounts for the fact that in almost all the capitals of Europe the very names of the open spaces of ornamented ground most frequented by their inhabitants demonstrate them to have been, at an earlier period, places reserved for the private pleasures of the monarch. The jardins of the Luxemburg, the Thier-Garten of Berlin, and the Grosser-Garten of Dresden, and our own royal parks, are examples.

If these remarks are well founded, it necessarily follows that places devoted to a kind of recreation passionately desired by all mankind, and linked at the same time with the peculiar circumstances of a nation's history, must afford a favourable field for the observation of national manners. The public haunts of which we have been speaking are equally fascinating in the reality of present existence, and in the fragmentary notices of them scattered through every national literature worthy of the name.

It has been intimated that, as public haunts, the Parks of London scarcely date from an earlier period than the time of the Commonwealth. It may be added that, in their character of royal demesnes, St. James's, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens are no older than the time of Henry VIII., while even that spruce upstart, the Regent's Park, can claim a connection with royalty, more equivocal and less blazoned, it is true, but equally certain. Their common story will form an appropriate introduction to what may be called the biography of each, and is briefly as follows:

The fields which now constitute St. James's Park were acquired by Henry VIII.