hoped no woman would have dared to play. And much of the obscenity which defiles the comic drama of the time may be attributed to this practice. Yet it is certain that these young artists acquired considerable skill in delineating even the finer shades of character. It was the custom for actors of great repute to take boys as apprentices. Alleyn and Burbage thus educated their pupils in the histrionic art, by first teaching them to play inferior parts, and by gradually advancing them to more important posts. Some of the male characters assigned to them required a delicate perception of the subtlest sentiments. The part of Arthur in King John is celebrated for its pathos, and we have already quoted enough from the death-scene of Fletcher's Hengo to prove how touching might have been that dialogue between the dying hero of some ten years old and his stern uncle. Often, too, when they appeared as women on the stage, they assumed a male disguise, and carried on a double part with constant innuendoes, hints, and half-betrayals of their simulated sex. The Pages in Philaster and The Lover's Melancholy, Viola in Twelfth Night, Imogen, and Jonson's Silent Woman, are instances of these epicene characters which our ancestors delighted to contemplate. "What an odd double confusion it must have made," says Charles Lamb, "to see a boy play a woman playing a man : we cannot disentangle the perplexity without some violence to the imagination." So powerful was the influence of these romantic metamorphoses upon the fancy of ladies at the time, that some distressed damsels seem to have entertained the notion of following their lovers, actually as pages, to the The daughter of Sir George Moore resolved to accompany the poet Donne in his travels under this disguise. He dissuaded her from the attempt in verses of exquisite feeling and propriety : wars. Dissemble nothing, not a boy, nor change Thy body's habit, nor mind; be not strange After picturing the dangers she might run upon the seas and in foreign lands, he adds :-- For thee England is only a worthy gallery From Walton's Lives, we learn that this love, so powerful on her side as to make her willing to unsex herself, so pure and noble and respectful on the poet's as to induce him to refuse this sacrifice, proved most unfortunate. Modern Falconry. HUNTING and hawking were, as every one knows, the great sports of our forefathers. Angling was but little understood before the time of Walton and Cotton, and not thoroughly even by those great masters themselves. In the olden time, the bow and arrow, being scarcely adapted for fowling, were used almost exclusively against large game, such as deer; the crossbow was perhaps not a very efficient weapon; and the art of shooting flying with a fowling-piece may be said to be of recent invention. It is true that, a couple of hundred years ago, men (the sportsmen of those days) might have been seen, armed with a matchlock, or some such wonderful contrivance, crawling towards a covey of basking partridges, with the intention of shooting them on the ground; and Dame Juliana Berners, who wrote upon falconry in the middle of the fifteenth century, invented a fly-rod of such excessive weight that the strongest salmonfisher in these days would be unwilling to wield it. But this was sorry work, and we can well understand that, of itself, it was very far from satisfying a sport-loving people. They still held by the old sports. Hunting and hawking were in their glory when what we now call "shooting" and "fishing" were scarcely understood at all. Deer were in abundance, and so was other game, especially if we consider the few people privileged to kill it. In those days, though not in these, the most sportsmanlike way was the most profitable; and more quarry could be taken with dogs and hawks than in any other, and perhaps less legitimate, manner. Hunting we retain, as our great and national sport, though circumstances, rather than choice, have led to our exchanging the stag for the fox. But falconry, the great sport of chivalry, once the national sport of these islands, has been permitted so nearly to die out that but few people are aware of its existence amongst us. That it does still live, however, though under a cloud,-to what extent and in what manner it is carried out, it is the purport of this paper to show. The causes of the decrease, and almost the loss, of this sport are obvious enough. Amongst the chief are, the present enclosed state of the country; the perfection—or what is almost perfection-of modern gunnery, and of the marksman's skill, and the desire to make large bags. Add to these, perhaps, the trouble and expense attendant upon keeping hawks. But the links have at no time absolutely been broken which, in England, unite falconry in the time of Ethelbert to falconry of the present day. Lord Orford and Colonel Thornton took them up and strengthened them at the end of the last, and the beginning of the present, century. Later still, the Loo Club in Holland saved falconry from extinction in England, because its English members brought their falcons to this country, and flew them here. The Barrs, first-rate Scotch falconers, and John Pells, of Norfolk, helped the course by training and selling hawks; and a work entitled Falconry in the British Isles, published in 1855, together with some chapters which appeared rather later in one of the leading sporting newspapers (and were afterwards collected in a volume), served to create or encourage a love for falconry. It was said that the present Duke of St. Albans, the Grand Falconer, would take to the sport con amore, and not as a mere form; but this is very far indeed from being the case. The Maharajah Dhuleep Singh was perhaps the most considerable falconer of the present day; and last season but one he killed 119 grouse with his young hawks; but he has lately given up the greater part of his hawking establishment. In Ireland there are some good falcons, flown occasionally at herons, and frequently, and with great success, at other quarry; many officers in the army are falconers; and, in the wilds of Cheshire, there lives a poor gentleman who has flown hawks for fifteen years, and contrives, through the courtesy of his friends, to make a bag on the moors with his famous grouse-hawk "The Princess," and one or two others. Those who have been accustomed to regard falconry as entirely a thing of the past, and the secret of hawk-training as utterly lost as that of Stonehenge or the Pyramids, will be surprised to hear that there are, at the present time, hawks in England of such proved excellence, that it is impossible to conceive even princes in the olden time, notwithstanding the monstrous prices they are said to have paid for some falcons, ever possessing better. When a peregrine falcon will "wait on," as it is called, at the height of a hundred, or a hundred and fifty yards above her master, as he beats the moors for her, and, when the birds rise, chase them with almost the speed of an arrow; when she is sure to kill, unless the grouse escapes in cover; when she will not attempt to "carry" her game, even should a dog run by her, and when she is ready to fly two or three times in one morning; it can easily be imagined, even by those who know nothing of falconry, that she has reached excellence. And so, in heron-hawking. If a cast of falcons, unhooded at a quarter of a mile from a passing heron (especially a "light" heron, i. e. a heron going to feed, and therefore not weighted), capture him in a wind, and after a two-mile flight, it is difficult to suppose, cæteris paribus, that any hawks could possibly be superior to them. And, as such hawks as we have described exist, the inevitable conclusion is, that where falconry is really understood, it is understood as well as it ever was; or, in other words, that modern falconry, as far as the perfection of individual hawks is concerned, is equal to ancient. Our forefathers, excellent falconers as they were, chose to make a wonderful mystery of their craft; and when they did publish a book on the subject of their great sport, its directions could only avail the gentry of those exclusive times. In examining these books, one is sometimes almost tempted to doubt whether the writers really offered the whole of their contents in a spirit of good faith; at any rate, some of the advice is very startling to modern ears; and no sane man of the present day would dream of following it. Perhaps the reader would like an extract. Here, then, is a recipe for a sick hawk, extracted from The Gentleman's Recreation, published 1677. "Take germander, pelamountain, basil, grummelseed, and broom-flowers, of each half an ounce; hyssop, sassafras, polypodium, and horse-mints, of each a quarter of an ounce, and the like of nutmegs; cubebs, borage, mummy, mugwort, sage, and the four kinds of mirobolans, of each half an ounce; of aloes soccotrine the fifth part of an ounce, and of saffron one whole ounce. To be put into a hen's gut, tied at both ends." What was supposed to be the effect of this marvellous mixture, it is somewhat hard to divine; but our modern pharmacopoeia would be content with a little rhubarb, and a few peppercorns. With regard to food, we are told, in the same work, that cock's flesh is proper for falcons that are "melancholick;" and that "phlegmatick " birds are to be treated in a different way,-possibly fed on pullets. Were this paper intended as a notice of ancient, instead of modern falconry, we might multiply instances to show the extreme faddiness of the old falconers. Simply to tame a hawk is excessively easy. To train it, up to a certain point, is not at all difficult. But it requires an old and practised hand to produce a bird of first-rate excellence. The modern routine of training the peregrine falcon is shortly as follows:-Young birds are procured, generally from Scotland, either just before they can fly, or just after. They are placed in some straw, on a platform, in an outhouse, which ought to open to the south-east. They are furnished each with a large bell (the size of a very small walnut) for the leg; and each with a couple of jessies (short straps of leather) for both legs. If they are unable to fly, the door of the coach-house (or whatever the outhouse may be) should be left open; but if they have tolerable use of their wings, it will be necessary to close it for the first few days. They are fed twice a day with beefsteak changed, occasionally, for rabbit, rook, or pigeon; and, if the birds are very young, the food must be cut up small; but it is improper to take them from the nest until the feathers have shown themselves thoroughly through the white down. A lure is then used. This instrument need be nothing more than a forked and somewhat heavy piece of wood (sometimes covered with leather), to which is fastened a strap and a couple of pigeons' wings. To this meat is tied; and the young hawks are encouraged to fly down from their platform, at the stated feeding times, to take their meals from it, the falconer either loudly whistling or shouting to them the while. Presently, and as they become acquainted with the lures, they are permitted to fly at large for a fortnight or three weeks; and, if the feeding-times be kept, the lures well furnished with food, and the shout or whistle employed, the hawks will certainly return when they are due; unless, indeed, they have been injured or destroyed when from home, by accident or malice. This flying at liberty is termed "flying at hack." When the young hawks show any disposition to prey for themselves (though the heavy bells are intended slightly to delay this), they are taken up from "hack," either with a small net, or with the hand. They are then taught to wear the hood, and are carried on the fist. In a few days they are sufficiently tame to be trusted at large, and may be flown at young grouse or pigeons, the heavy bells having been changed for the lightest procurable. At this period great pains are taken by the falconer to prevent his bird "carrying" her game; for it is obvious that, were the hawk to move when he approached her, he would be subject constantly to the greatest trouble and disappointment. The tales told in books about hawks bringing quarry to their master are absurd; the falconer must go to his hawk. Such is a sketch of the training in modern times of the eyas or young bird. Wildcaught hawks, however, called "haggards," are occasionally used. These, though excellent for herons and rooks, are not good for game-hawking, as it is difficult to make them "wait on" about the falconer, and all game must be flown from the air, and not from the hood; i.e. by a hawk from her pitch, and not from the fist of her master. Haggards, of course, are never flown at "hack." The tiercel, or male peregrine, is excellent for partridges and pigeons; but the female bird only can have a chance with herons, and is to be preferred also for grouse and rooks. We have in this country several trained goshawks, which are flown at rabbits; also sometimes at hares and pheasants. The merlin, too, is occasionally trained: the present writer flew these beautiful little birds at larks for years; but gave them up in 1857, and confined himself entirely to peregrines and goshawks. The sparrowhawk, the wildest of hawks, is sometimes used for small birds. The hobby is hardly to be procured. The Iceland and Greenland falcons are prized, but are rarely met with. These large birds are called gerfalcons; and, when very white, and good in the field, fetched extravagant prices in the old times. They may now sometimes be procured untrained for 5l. or 61. each; but the peregrine is large enough for the game of this country It may be interesting to know, in something like detail, what a flight at game, rooks, pigeons, or magpies is like; how it is conducted, and to what extent the sagacity of hawks may be developed. To this end, we will give a sketch or two of what is being done now, and what will be done in the game season. At this season of the year, and in this country, falconers are obliged to be content with rook, pigeon, or magpie flying. Such quarry is flown "out of the hood," and not from the air; i.e., the hawk, instead of "waiting on over the falconer in expectation of quarry being sprung, is unhooded as it rises, and is cast off from the fist. At least the only exception to this is when pigeons are thrown from the hand in order to teach a hawk to "wait on." |