The most popular amusements of the lower orders were wrestling, bowling, quoit and ninepin playing, and games at ball. In wrestling the Cornwall and Devonshire men excelled, and a ram, or sometimes a cock, was the prize of the victor. Bowling alleys were commonly attached to the houses of the wealthy, and to places of public resort. Among the games at ball we find tennis, trap-ball, bat and ball, and the balloon-ball, in which a large ball filled with air was struck from one side to the other by two players with their hands and wrists guarded by bandages. Archery was now on the decline, owing to the introduction of firearms; nor could all the legislative enactments of the day revive its constant use. The quarter-staff was also a favourite weapon of sportive fence, which was a staff about five or six feet long, grasped in the middle with one hand, while the other slid up and down as it was required to strike or to ward a blow.
The citizens of London enjoyed themselves in winter by skating on the Thames, (the old shankbones of sheep having now been superseded by regular skates, probably introduced from the Netherlands,) and in summer with sailing and rowing. Dice and cards, prisoner's base, blind man's buff, battledoor and shuttlecock, bull-baiting, and cock-fighting, a rude species of mumming, the dancing of fools at Christmas, and other games, completed the gratifications of the populace.
NOVEL MODE OF TAKING VENGEANCE.
The Chinese have a book entitled Si-yuen, that is to say, "The Washing of the Pit," a work on medical jurisprudence, very celebrated all over the empire, and which should be in the hands of all Chinese magistrates. It is impossible to read the Si-yuen without being convinced that the number of attempts against life in this country is very considerable, and especially that suicide is very common. The extreme readiness with which the Chinese are induced to kill themselves, is almost inconceivable; some mere trifle, a word almost, is sufficient to cause them to hang themselves, or throw themselves to the bottom of a well; the two favourite modes of suicide. In other countries, if a man wishes to wreak his vengeance on an enemy, he tries to kill him; in China, on the contrary, he kills himself. This anomaly depends upon various causes, of which these are the principal:—In the first place, Chinese law throws the responsibility of a suicide on those who may be supposed to be the cause or occasion of it. It follows, therefore, that if you wish to be revenged on an enemy, you have only to kill yourself to be sure of getting him into horrible trouble; for he falls immediately into the hands of justice, and will certainly be tortured and ruined, if not deprived of life. The family of the suicide also usually obtains, in these cases, considerable damages; so that it is by no means a rare case for an unfortunate man to commit suicide in the house of a rich one, from a morbid idea of family affection. In killing his enemy, on the contrary, the murderer exposes his own relatives and friends to injury, disgraces them, reduces them to poverty, and deprives himself of funeral honours, a great point for a Chinese, and concerning which he is extremely anxious. It is to be remarked also, that public opinion, so far from disapproving of suicide, honours and glorifies it. The conduct of a man who destroys his own life, to avenge himself on an enemy whom he has no other way of reaching, is regarded as heroic and magnanimous.
PERSECUTION IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN MARY.
The total number of persons who perished in the flames for their religion during this reign has been variously reckoned at 277 and 288, amongst whom were 5 bishops, 21 divines, 8 gentlemen, 84 artificers, 100 husbandmen, servants, and labourers, 26 wives, 20 widows, 9 unmarried women, 2 boys, and 2 infants, of which last one was whipped to death by the savage Bonner, and the other, springing out of its mother's womb, at the stake, was mercilessly thrown back into the fire. The number of those that died in prison was also very great. Yet England may be considered as comparatively free from persecution during this period, for all over the continent the victims of bigotry were reckoned, not by hundreds, but by thousands, and in the Netherlands alone 50,000 persons are said to have lost their lives in the religious wars of the Spaniards.
WAYSIDE MONUMENTS.
The sketch on next page represents a curious custom which still prevails in the neighbourhood of Cong, near Oughterard in Ireland. It is well described in the following account of their tour by Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall:—"On the way to Joyce's Country we saw heaps of piled-up stones on either side of the road; these heaps continuing for above a mile, after their commencement a short distance from the western entrance to the town. The artist may convey a better notion of their peculiar character than any written description can do. We left our car to examine them minutely; and learned they were monuments to the memory of "deceased" persons, "erected" by their surviving friends. Upon death occurring, the primitive tumulus is built,—if that may be called building which consists in placing a few large stones upon a spot previously unoccupied. Each relative of the dead adds to the heap; and in time it becomes a "mountain" of tolerable size. Each family knows its own particular monument; and a member of, or a descendant from it, prays and leaves his offering only at that especial one. The custom has endured for many generations: some of the heaps bore tokens of great age; and one was pointed out to us of which there were records, in the transferred memories of the people, for at least 500 years. The bodies are in no instance buried here—it is not consecrated earth; the monuments are merely memorials, and no doubt originated at a period when a Roman Catholic was, according to the provisions of a law equally foolish and cruel, interred, without form or ceremony, in church ground—the ground that had been the property of their ancestors. None of these stone cairns have any masonwork, and they are generally of the rudest forms, or rather without any form, the stones having been carelessly cast one upon another. Upon one of them only could we discover any inscription—this one is introduced into the print; it is built with far more than the usual care; it contained an inscription; "Pray for ye soule of John Joyce, & Mary Joyce, his wife, died 1712;" some of them, however, seem to have been constructed with greater care than others, and many of them were topped with a small wooden cross. We estimated that there were at least 500 of these primitive monuments—of all shapes and sizes—along the road. In each of them we observed a small hollow, which the peasants call a "window;" most of these were full of pebbles, and upon inquiry we learned that when one of the race to whom the deceased belonged kneels by the side of this record to his memory and offers up a prayer for the repose of his soul, it is customary to fling a little stone into this "cupboard;" the belief being that gradually as it fills, so, gradually, the soul is relieved from punishment in purgatory; when completely full the soul has entered paradise. We have prolonged our description of this singular and interesting scene, because it seems to have been altogether overlooked by travellers, and because we believe that nothing like it is to be met with in any other part of Ireland; although similar objects are to be found in several other places about Connemara, none of them, however, are so extensive as this which adjoins Cong."
