which serves to kill our friends in peace, but cannot much hurt our foes in war (George Silver, Paradoxes of Defence, 1599). But they were soon discomfited. In 1617 we find one Joseph Swetnam, a garrulous and not original author, declaring that the short sword or back-sword (a stout sword so called from having only one edge) is against the rapier "little better than a tobacco pipe or a fox tail." We must not suppose that the rapier fight of the sixteenth century resembled modern fencing. It was the commoner practice to hold a dagger in the left hand for parrying; this, by the way, has an odd analogy in

China, where instruments like blunt skewers are used for the same purpose. And not only did the use of the dagger, or in its absence of the gauntleted left hand, make the conditions different from those of the modern fencing school, but the principles and methods were as yet crude and unformed. The fencing-match in Hamlet is now presented according to the modern fashion, and Dumas and Gautier, both of whom knew the historic truth well enough, freely introduce the modern terms and rules into the single combats of their

novels. In each case this course is justified by artistic necessity. But if we look to the engravings in Saviolo or Grassi, we shall find that Hamlet and Laertes, when the play was a novelty at the Globe Theatre, stood at what would now be thought an absurdly short distance (for the lunge, or delivery of the thrust by a swift forward movement of the right foot and body, with the left foot as a fixed point, was not yet invented), with their sword-hands down at their knees, the points of their rapiers directed not to the breast but to the face of the adversary, and their left hands held up in front of the shoulder in a singularly awkward attitude. A great object was to seize the adversary's sword-hilt with the left hand; and this perhaps explains the "scuffling" in which Hamlet and

Laertes change foils-a thing barely possible in a fencing-match of the present day. An incidental illustration of the part of the left hand in defence is given in Romeo and Juliet, where it is related that Mercutio

"with one hand beats

Cold death aside, and with the other sends
It back to Tybalt."

The duel with rapier and dagger had particular rules of its own; and the handling of a "case of rapiers" (that is, a rapier in either hand) was also taught, but, one would think, only for display.

During this period the use of the edge was combined with that of the point, but the point was preferred. "To tell the truth," says Saviolo, "I would not advise any friend of mine, if he were to fight for his credit and life, to strike neither mandrittas nor riversas" (the technical names of direct and back-handed cuts), "because he puts himself in danger of his life; for to use the point is more ready, and spends not the like time." In the books of the seventeenth century the instructions for mandrittas and riversas disappear accordingly, and at the beginning of the eighteenth we find the small-sword in existence and the rapier gradually giving place to it. Experiments had already been made with thrusting blades of triangular or quadrangular section; at least, specimens of such, ascribed to the early seventeenth or even the end of the sixteenth century, may be seen in museums. In some of these cases, however, one would like to ascertain that a more recent blade has not been mounted in a hilt of the period attributed to the weapon. Be that as it may, the small-sword completely prevailed over the two-edged rapier some time about 1715. At the same time that the form of the blade was changed, its length, which had been excessive, was reduced to a handier and not less effective compass. As regards the mounting and guard also there was a marked return to simplicity.

The

elaborate work of the Spanish rapier hilts disappears, to be replaced by a plain shell guard for the duelling sword, and a very light hilt, capable, however, of much decoration if desired, for the walking sword which every gentleman habitually wore until near the end of the last century. Meanwhile the art of fencing made rapid progress, and may be said to have been fixed in substance upon its modern lines by 1750 or thereabouts. To give an account of its development before and since that time would require not a part of a discourse, nor a whole discourse, but a book.

One is tempted in the various forms and uses of the sword to see a reflection of the general temper, and even the tastes and style of the age. The sword of each period seems fitted by no mere accident to the gentlemen, both scholars and soldiers, like Bassanio, who wore and handled it. The long rapier, with its quillons and cunningly wrought metal-work, and somewhat rigid hand-hold, is a kind of visible image of the stately and involved periods of Elizabethan prose. I can persuade myself that it was not in the nature of things for Sidney or Raleigh to be otherwise armed. When we come to the great forerunners of modern English, Hobbes (who has in nowise forgotten to put a sword in the right hand of the mystical figure representing the might of the State in the frontispiece to his Leviathan) seems to wield an Andrea Ferara, such a blade and so mounted as Cromwell's, dealing nimbly and shrewdly with both edge and point. And in the exquisite dialectic of Berkeley and Hume, as clear and graceful as it is subtle, and without a superfluous word, we surely have the true counterpart of the finished play of the smallsword, the perfection of single combat. Warfare is on a grander scale now, the controversies of philosophers as well as the campaigns of generals. There are modern philosophical arguments which profess to be more weighty, as they are certainly more

voluminous, than Hume's or Berkeley's, and which remind one not of an assault between two strong and supple fencers in which every movement can be followed, but of a modern field-day, where there is much hurrying to and fro, much din, dust, and smoke, and extreme difficulty in discovering what is really going on.

But our story is not fully done. At the same time, or almost the same time, with the small-sword there came in an offshoot of this class of weapons which has a curious little history of its own, namely the bayonet, a modified dagger in its immediate origin, but influenced in its settled ordinary form by the small-sword, and by the sabre and yataghan in various experimental forms which have ended in the sword-bayonet largely used in Continental services, and to some extent in

our own.

A word is also due to the modern military sabre. This, broadly speaking, is a continuation of the straight European military sword of the sixteenth century, lengthened and lightened after the example of the rapier, but one-edged instead of two-edged, and in many cases more or less curved after the fashion of the Eastern swords. The rapier and the smallsword are weapons of single combat, not of general military use; the smallsword is too fragile, the rapier both too fragile and too long, for a soldier's convenience. It is true that it was proposed by no less an authority than Marshal Saxe to arm cavalry with long bayonet-shaped swords, and his opinion has been followed by at least one modern writer. But it is founded on the erroneous notion that a good cutting sabre cannot have a good point, and therefore either the edge or the point must be wholly sacrificed; a notion which has so far prevailed that late in the eighteenth century an excessively curved light cavalry sabre (apparently copied with close fidelity from an Indian model) was introduced throughout the armies of Europe. It was the weapon of our light dragoons

all through the Peninsular and Waterloo campaigns, and effective for cutting, but almost or quite useless for pointing. Even now there remains a certain difference in most services between the shape of the light and the heavy cavalry swords, the heavy cavalry sword being straighter, or sometimes perfectly straight. But it is pretty well understood by this time that one and the same sword can be made, though not so perfect for thrusting as the duelling sword, nor so powerful for cutting as an Indian talwár or the old dragoon sabre, yet a very sufficient weapon for both purposes. A blade of moderate length, not too broad, and lightened by one or more grooves running nearly from hilt to point, may be shaped with a curve too slight to interfere gravely with the use of the point, yet sensible enough to make a difference in favour of the edge. This plan is now generally followed.

The use of the edge, after being unduly neglected in consequence of the startling effectiveness of the rapier-point, has also been more carefully studied in modern times. Closely connected with. with the error just now mentioned, that the same blade cannot be good for both cutting and thrusting, is an equally erroneous belief that a cut cannot be delivered with sufficient force except by exposing one's whole body. The old masters of rapier-fence already knew better. What says Grassi in the contemporary English version? By my counsel he that would deliver an edgeblow shall fetch no compass with his shoulder, because whilst he beareth his sword far off, he giveth time to the

wary enemy to enter first; but he shall only use the compass of the elbow and the wrist : which, as they be most swift, so are they strong enough if they be orderly handled." This is exactly what the best modern teachers say. Though sabre-play cannot rival the refinements of the lighter and more subtle small-sword, there is much more science in it than would be supposed by any one not acquainted with the matter; and it may easily be seen that a pair of single-stick players who have learnt from a good master do, in fact, expose themselves wonderfully little. Nor is it easy to say on which side the advantage ought to be in a combat between foil and sabre, the players being of fairly equal skill, and each acquainted with the use of both weapons.

My final word, albeit it savour of egotism, shall be one of practical testimony and counsel to a generation of students. I must add my voice to those of a long chain of authorities, medical and other, to bear witness that the exercise of arms, whether in the school of the small-sword, or in the practice, more congenial, perhaps, to the English nature, of the sturdier sabre, is the most admirable of regular correctives for the ill habits of a sedentary life. It is as true now as when George Silver wrote it under Queen Elizabeth that "the exercising of weapons putteth away aches, griefs, and diseases, it increaseth strength and sharpeneth the wits, it giveth a perfect judgment, it expelleth melancholy, choleric, and evil conceits, it keepeth a man in breath, perfect health, and long life."

FREDERICK POLLOCK.

IF the ruined castles of one era, and the grass-grown cabin sites of another, appeal strongly to the imagination of the visitor to Ireland, there is nothing to my mind half so pathetic as the forlorn aspect of the smaller country houses which the social convulsions following the famine, and the Encumbered Estates Act, denuded of their occupants. Most of these have become the habitat of farmers, and, amid the decayed relics of their former finery, look almost, though not quite as melancholy, as those few that have for different reasons been absolutely abandoned to the bats and owls.

Not far from the centre of Ireland, and almost exactly equidistant between the Atlantic and the Irish Sea, the traveller from Dublin to Cork will see a range of mountains spring from the flat country far away upon his right, and follow the railway upon the verge of sight for many miles, rising and falling in dark waves against the western sky. All along the base of these hills lay at one time one of the thickest populations in Ireland, and the whole surrounding district has been made famous in connection with these and other times of disturbance and convulsion by the pen of one who was a leading resident and actor in them.

Fifty years ago a local gentry clustered thickly in the low country on either side of the mountains-a

gentry of various subtle degrees

doubtless, but all entitled to shoot at one another at twelve paces, to get drunk like gentlemen, to hunt in scarlet, and with a proper contempt for trade. The economic disturbances which swept most of these away are too recent for time to have effaced or even to have made much impression on the walls and roofs which sheltered

them, though the cabins which made their existence possible have left no traces but the grass grown potato patches, and here and there the stone chimneys where their peat fires blew.

It is one of these deserted mansions, hardly old in the generally accepted sense of the term, but prematurely grey and worn, from neglect, that has fastened itself on my mind, I hardly know why, except that no lapse of years, no length of absence, ever seems to reveal the smallest change on its plain, wan face. It is not the hunting-box of a nobleman, nor is it the house of a squire, whose rent-roll, could he collect it, would enable him to live there; but a relic rather of other days, an anachronism upon the present face of the country. The five hundred acres of timber and grazing land, and the almost worthless stretch of bog and mountain above them that form the estate, was sufficient in the old potato days before the famine, when the population had run to nine millions, and this part of the country was at least maintaining the average of increase, to produce, at any rate by the number of its petty tenants, and with a little help perhaps from other sources, rent sufficient to maintain a family living as gentry, and ruffling it after the manner of those times about the country side. To keep however the blear-eyed ghostly mansion upon its legs in these days, much less to restore it to its pristine splendour, would require something more than the three or four hundred acres of grass-land round it, even supposing its owner had the inclination and the knowledge to turn farmer, and apply both time and attention to the family acres.

This particular inheritance however survived the famine days, survived the Incumbered Estates Act, and the rent

of the land still goes into the pockets of the "ould race," though its representative has so far forgotten the pride of his ancestors, and the traditions of the cock-pit and the race-course, as to be placidly bowling around some English watering place in a doctor's brougham, with little left to mark from whence as a boy he came, but an aptitude for getting hold of better horses at lower figures than his brother practitioners. The grass lands have been let for many a long year to a neighbouring proprietor of the same calibre who has remained an Irishman by turning farmer in his youth, but the house has remained uninhabited, and has shivered and shaken and rattled in the gales of a score of winters. It stands far back from the public road that leads from the railroad and market-town some twelve miles off to the mountains immediately at its back, whose height and extent cut off the neighbourhood from all outside intercourse upon the north and west. There is not much traffic upon this part of the high road, even now-a-days. Strings of carts carrying townwards on market-days the produce

and the families-of the mountaineers, the same procession coming homeward at dusk, the wife driving, and the husband lying drunk in the straw.

The little river that takes its rise some ten miles up in the heart of the mountains, and has here spread out into a broadish stream, bends round two sides of the demesne, and the thick growth of woodland that for a long distance hangs over the water, often turns the occasional angler into the pathway that, crossing the fields in front of the house, cuts off the elbow and joins the river lower down, where it sweeps out of the plantations on to the boggy pastures beyond. It is no easy matter to get out of the belt of woodland that skirts the river; a dense undergrowth of holly has everywhere spread rank and thick, while the paths and tracks of former days are covered deep with the leaves of beech or ash that have blown and

gathered and rotted there for years and years. Broken limbs that have tumbled from the trees above lie rotting where they fell, save where they are collected and piled upon the gaps in the fence that divides us from the open fields. Once outside a faint path leads us across the velvety, daisyflecked turf, on which good-looking cattle, fresh from the yards, are cropping at the sweet, short grass with the eagerness of a first bite, and slowly shedding their rough winter coats. Spring is rampant everywhere, the may and the gorse blaze in the sun from the broken banks that divide field from field. The thorn trees rustle in full summer dress, and atone for the oaks beyond them which are still almost bare, and the newly-arrived swallows sweep round and round high up against an almost cloudless sky. What was once the carriage drive beneath an avenue of limes, abruptly terminates our path. If you follow the former back to the high road, you will find its outlet marked by two ponderous stone gate-posts. Upon one of these a mutilated and unrecognisable device of the same material lifts its disfigured head. At the foot of the other the remains of a similar heraldic monster will be found with the rusted half of an iron gate buried in the long grass, weeds, and nettles that grow close up to the fence. Beside the gateway are the roofless walls of a cabin that must have done duty in halcyon days as a lodge. Following what was once a drive, but is now a mere farm track towards the house, another gateway, bearing the same evidence of former aspirations, divides the lawn from the large pasture field, the arrangement of whose timber, and the big swampy depression in the far end of it, that has evidently been a pond, argues that tendency to parks and lakes to misplaced and incongruous. efforts at display which the satirists of old rural Ireland so particularly rejoiced in.

The short gravel sweep to the house is now as green as the lawn through which it runs, and sprinkled with the