After dinner, however, when the gentlemen joined the ladies and the sports recommenced, Miss Page was nowhere to be found. Mrs. Page, on her daughter being called for, announced to the secretary that Lucy had abandoned the contest; and on being anxiously questioned by Horace and Frances as to the cause of her absence, she avowed that she could not very well tell what was become of her, but that she fancied she was gone with her father and Aunt Dinah in search of the Ladye Fountain, a celebrated spring, situate somewhere or other in the seven hundred acres of fir-wood which united the fertile demesne of Oakley to another fine estate belonging to the same gentleman; a spring which Aunt Dinah had remembered in her childhood, before the fir-trees were planted, and had taken a strong fancy to see again. "And so Lucy," pursued Mrs. Page, “has left the archery and her chance of the Silver Arrow, and has even run away from Miss Vernon, to go exploring the woods with Aunt Dinah."

"She is gone that Frances may gain the prize, sweet creature that she is!" thought our friend Horace.

Two hours afterwards, Horace Vernon found his way through the dark and fragrant fir plantations to a little romantic glade, where the setting sun glanced between the deep red trunks of the trees on a clear spring, meandering over a bed of mossy turf inlaid with wild thyme, and dwarf heath, and the delicate harebell, illumining a figure fair as a wood-nymph, seated on the fantastic roots of the pines, with Mr. Page on one side and Aunt Dinah on the other. 66 You have brought me good news,' exclaimed Lucy, springing forward to meet him; Frances, dear, dear Frances, has won the Silver Arrow!"

"I have brought you the Silver Arrow for yourself," replied Horace, offering her the little prize token, quite forgetting how exceedingly contemptible that prize had appeared to him that very morning; or, if remembering it, thinking only that nothing could be really contemptible which gave occasion to so pretty and so unostentatious a sacrifice of a feather in the cap of youth."

"But how can that be, when, even before I declined the contest, Frances had beaten me? The prize is hers, and must be hers. I cannot take it; and even if it were mine, it would give me no pleasure. It was her success that was my triumph. Pray, take the arrow back again. Pray, pray, my dear father, make Mr. Vernon take the arrow."

"How am I to make him, Lucy?" inquired her father, laughing.

"It is yours, I assure you," replied Horace; "and Frances cannot take it, because she has just such another of her own. Did not you know that there were two prizes?-one for the greatest number of good shots, highest score, as Mr. Secretary calls it, which,

the

owing probably to your secession, has been adjudged to Frances; and another for the best shot of all, which was fairly won by you. And now, my dear Mr. Page, I, in my turn, shall apply to you to make your daughter take the arrow; and then I must appeal to her to honour me with her hand for the two first sets of quadrilles, and as many more dances as she can spare to me during the evening." And the young lady smiled very graciously, and they danced together half the night.

Well, brother," asked Frances, as they were returning home together from Oakley Park, "how have you been amused at the archery meeting?"

"Hem!" ejaculated Horace; "that's a saucy question. Nevertheless, you shall have the truth. I liked it better than I expected. The place is beautiful, and the sport, after all, national and English."

"Then you mean to become an archer?" "Perhaps I may."

"And to win the next Silver Arrow?" "If I can."

"There's a dear brother! And how did you like our good friend Mr. Page? Did not you find him national and English also?"

He is

"That's another saucy question, Miss Fanchon," again exclaimed Horace: "but I am in a truth-telling humour. I liked your good friend exceedingly; and heartily agree with him in thinking that the admission of the country people, through the kindness of Mr. Oakley and Lady Margaret, mixing the variety, and the crowd, and the animation of a fair with the elegance of a fete champêtre, formed by far the prettiest part of the scene. very English, and I like him all the better for so being," continued Horace, manfully. “And now, my dear little Fanny, to forestall that sauciest question of all, which I know to be coming, I give you warning before our good cousin here, that I will not tell you how I like Mr. Page's fair daughter until I am in a fair way of knowing how Mr. Page's fair daughter likes me."

"Thank Heaven!" thought Frances; "that was all that I wanted to know."

"And so, ladies both," added Horace, as the carriage drove up to the door of the Hall and he handed them out,—“ it being now three o'clock in the morning, I have the honour of wishing you good-night."

once fashionable, laughing saucily at our former selves, as we think-Did I really ever wear such a bonnet? or such a sleeve? In proportion to the popularity of this pretty amusement will be its transiency. The moment that it becomes common, (and that moment is approaching fast,) it will pass out of fashion and be forgotten. Nothing is so dangerous in this country as a too great and too sudden reputation. The reaction is overwhelming. We are a strange people, we English, and are sure to knock down our idols, and avenge on their innocent heads the sin of our own idolatry.

In the mean while archery has its day, (and even to have had its day, when that melancholy change of taste shall arrive, will be something.)-and it has also a minstrel of whom it has more than common cause to be proud. Every body knows that there is nothing more pleasant than the trifling of those whose trifling is merely a relaxation from graver and greater things. Now, it happens that in these parts-not indeed in the Oakley Park Club, but in one not a hundred miles distant-they are lucky enough to possess a person eminent in many ways, and good-humoured enough to have composed for the amusement of his neighbours one of the pleasantest ballads that has been seen since the days of Robin Hood. King Richard and Friar Tuck might have chanted it in the hermit's cell, and doubtless would have done so had they been aware of its existence. I cannot resist the temptation of quoting a few stanzas, in hopes of prevailing on the author (it is printed for private distribution) to make public the rest. It purports to be the Legend of the Pinner of Wakefield-I presume (although it is not so stated in the preface) of "George-a-Greene," who held that station, and whose exploits form the subject of a very pleasant old play. It begins as follows:

"The Pindar of Wakefield is my style,
And what I list I write;
Whilom a clerk of Oxenforde,

But now a wandering wight.
"When birds sing free in bower and tree,
And sports are to the fore,

With fiddle and long-bow forth I pace,
As Phoebus did of yore.

"The twang of both best liketh me

By those fair spots of earth,
Where Chaucer conn'd his minstrelsy,
And Alfred drew his birth.

"And whatsoever chance conceit
Within my brain doth light,
It trickleth to my fingers' ends,
And needs I must indite.

"Even thus my godfather of Greece,
Whose worthy name I bear,

Of a cock or a bull, or a whale would sing,
And seldom stopp'd to care.

For whoso shall gainsay,' quoth he,
My sovereign will and law,
Or carpeth at my strain divine
In hope to sniff some flaw,
Certes, I reck of the lousie knave
As an eagle of a daw.'

Yet whomsoe'er in wrestling ring
He spied to bear him strong,

Or whom he knew a good man and true,
fie clapp'd him in a song.

"Like him, it listeth me to tell

Some fytte in former years,

Of the merry men all and yeomen tall
Who were my jovial feres."

And so on to the end of the chapter.

*Chaucer, it is said, resided at Donnington Castle: Alfred was born at Wantage. Hence a clue to the locality of the ballad.

To illustrate Davenant's expression as quoted by Horace, I copy from a very accurate recorder of the antiquities of the metropolis an account of Finsbury Fields, in the days when haberdashers' apprentices and other city youths resorted to them for the purpose of Archery.-the remote and gorgeous days of the Maiden Queen.

It is very well known to every one who is at all acquainted with the ancient history or topography of London, that the northern part of Finsbury Fieldsthat is to say, from the present Bunhill Row almost to Islington-was once divided into a number of large irregular pieces of ground, enclosed by banks and hedges, constituting the places of exercise for the City Archers. Along the boundaries of each of these fields were set the various marks for shooting, formerly known under the names of Targets, Butts, Prickes, and Rovers; all which were to be shot at with different kinds of arrows. They were also distinguished by their own respective titles, which were derived either from their situation, their proprietors, the person by whom they were erected, the name of some famous archer, or perhaps from some circumstance now altogether unknown. These names, however, were often sufficiently singular; for in an ancient map of Finsbury Fields, yet extant, there occur the titles of "Martin's Monkie," the "Red Dragon," "Theese in the Hedge," and the "Mercer's Maid." Indeed, one of these names, not less remarkable, was given so late as the year 1746, in consequence of a person, named Pitfield, having destroyed an ancient shooting-butt, and being obliged to restore it by order of an Act passed in 1632: the Artillery Company, to which it belonged, engraved upon the new mark the significant title of "Pitfield's Repentance." The general form of the Finsbury shooting-butts was that of a lofty pillar of wood, carved with various devices of human figures and animals, gaily painted and gilt; but there was also another kind, of which some specimens have remained until almost the present day. These consisted of a broad and high sloping bank of green turf, having tall wings of stout wooden paling, spreading out on each side. Such shooting-butts, however, were chiefly for the practice of the more inexpert archers, and not for those who, like Master Shallow's "old Double, would have clapt in the clout at twelve score, and carried you a forehand shaft at fourteen, and fourteen and a half." Upon this bank of turf was hung the target, and sometimes the side paling stretched out so as to form a long narrow lane for the archers to stand in; the principal intent of them being to protect spectators or passers-by from the danger of a random arrow, or an unskilful marksman: the latter, however, if in the Artillery Company, was not responsible for any person's life, if, previously to letting fly his arrow, he exclaimed "Fast!" The marks were erected at various distances from the shooting-places, some being so near as seventy-three yards, and others as far distant as sixteen score and two; though the ancient English bow is said sometimes to have been effective at so immense a distance as four hundred yards, or nearly a quarter of a mile. The fields in which these butts were placed, were, in the time of Elizabeth, a morass, subdivided by so many dikes and rivulets, that the ground was often new-made where the bowmen assembled, and bridges were thrown over the ditches to form a road from one field to another. Like the Slough of Despond, however, they swallowed so many cart-loads-yea, wagon-loads of materials for filling them up, that old Stow once declared his belief to be, that if MoorFields were made level with the battlements of the City Wall, they would be little the drier, such was the marshy nature of the ground.

It was in this place that the various troops of archers which formed the celebrated pageant of the 17th of September, 1583, assembled previously to that famous spectacle, habited in those sumptuous dresses by which the bowmen of Elizabeth's reign were so emi

nently distinguished. There came Barlow, Duke of Shoreditch; Covell, Marquis of Clerkenwell; Wood, the Marshal of the archers; the Earl of Pancras; the Marquesses of St. John's Wood, Hoxton, Shacklewell, and many other excellent marksmen, dignified by similar popular titles, long since forgotten. There was such glittering of green velvet and satin, such flapping of the coloured damask ensigns of the leaders, such displaying of wooden shields covered with gay blazonry, such quaintly-dressed masquers, such pageant-devices of the various London parishes which contributed to the show-such melodious shouts, songs, flights of whistling arrows, and winding of horns, that, as an author of the time truly says, "such a delight was taken by the witnesses thereof, as they wist not for a while where they were." But for those who would enjoy this pageant to perfection, let them turn over the leaves of Marshal Wood's very rare tract, of "The Bowman's Glory," which really blazes with his minute description of the dresses and proceedings. Many a deed of archery, well befitting the fame of Robin Hood himself, was that day recorded upon the Finsbury shooting-butts; many of the competitors repeatedly hit the white, and more than one split in pieces the arrow of a successful shooter.

It clear from the admirable dialogue between Silence and Shallow, alluded to above, (and Shakspeare is the best authority for everything, especially for English manners,) that in the days of Elizabeth at least, archery was, as the hero of my little story truly said, a popular, and not an aristocratic amusement.

THE YOUNG PAINTER.

THE death of a friend so ardently admired, so tenderly beloved, as Henry Warner, left poor Louis nearly as desolate as he had been when deprived in so fearful a manner of his early instructor, the good Abbé. Bijou, too, seemed again, so far as nature permitted, sorrow-stricken; and Mrs. Duval and Stephen Lane, both after their several fashions, sympathized with the grief of the affectionate boy. The fond mother fretted, and the worthy butcher scolded amain; and this species of consolation had at first the usual effect of worrying, rather than of comforting its unfortunate object. After a while, however, matters mended. Instead of nursing his depression in gloomy inaction, as had been the case after his former calamity, Louis had from the first followed the dying injunction of his lamented friend, by a strenuous application to drawing, in the rules of which he was now sufficiently grounded to pursue his studies with perceptible improvement; and time and industry proved in his case, as in so many others, the best restorers of youthful spirits. His talent too began to be recognized; and even Stephen Lane had given up, half grumblingly, his favourite project of taking him as an apprentice, and did not oppose himself so strenuously as heretofore to the connexion which Mrs. Duval now began to perceive between her own dream of the pot of gold and Louis's discovery of the paint-pot. "To be sure," thought honest Stephen, "women will be foolish and fanciful, even the best of 'em. But I've

noticed, by times, that every now and then one of their silliest fancies shall come true, just out of contrariness. So it's as well to humour them: and besides, if, as my Margaret thinks, Madam St. Eloy should be taking a fancy to the boy, it would be as good as finding a pot of gold in right earnest. Madam must be near upon seventy by this time. Ay, she was a fine grown young lady, prancing about upon her bay pony when first I went to live with Master Jackson-and that's fifty years agone: and she's a single woman still, and has no kindred that ever I heard of; for her brother, poor gentleman, left neither chick nor child: and she must be worth a power of money, besides the old house and the great Nunnery estate-a mort of money, and nobody to leave it to but just as she fancies! I scorn legacy-hunting," pursued the good butcher, checking and correcting the train of his own thoughts; "but howsomdever, if the old lady should take a liking to Louis, why she might go farther and fare worse. That's all I shall say in the business."

Madam St. Eloy was a person of no small consequence in Belford, where she spent regularly and liberally the larger part of her large income. She lived not in the town, but in an ancient mansion called The Nunnery, just across the river, erected, it is to be presumed, on the site of an old monastic establishment, and still retaining popularly its monastic name in spite of the endeavours of its Huguenot possessors to substitute the more protestant title of "The Place."

Very harshly must its conventual appellation haye sounded in the ears of the founder of this branch of the St. Eloy family, a Huguenot re-i fugee of Elizabeth's days, whose son, having, become connected with that most anti-catholic monarch James the First, by marrying a lady | about the person of Anne of Denmark, and who had been in his childhood the favourite attendant of Prince Charles, had bequeathed to his successors all the chivalrous loyalty, the devotion, and the prejudices of a cavalier of the Civil wars; prejudices which, in the person of their latest descendant, Madeleine de St. Eloy, had been strengthened and deepened by her having lost, in the course of one campaign, an only brother and a betrothed lover, when fight-i ing for the cause of French loyalty in the early part of the revolutionary war.

This signal misfortune decided the fate and the character of the heiress of the St. Eloys. Sprung from a proud and stately generation, high-minded, and reserved, she, on becoming, mistress of herself and her property, withdrew, almost entirely from the ordinary commerce of the world, and led, in her fine old mansion, a life little less retired than that of a protestant nun.

No place could be better adapted for such a seclusion. Separated from the town of Belford by the great river, and the rich and fertile