number. The arrows counted according to their
position in the target. A shot in the gold
circle counted nine; the red, seven; the inner
white, five; the black, three; the outer white,
one. Fines of half-a-crown were paid by the
losers, the amount being appropriated to the
support of a Sunday school. The girls of the
charity attended these archery meetings, attired
in dresses of grass-green.

The fair sex, in ancient times, were permitted
the use of the cross-bow, and Queen Elizabeth
is known to have wielded this weapon. It was
within the hollow of the Cadenham oak, a tree
of enormous girth, that her majesty was
accustomed to take her stand, and aim her shafts at
many a fair-headed buck which the foresters'
had, according to previous directions, windlassed
towards the spot. The sylvan recesses of
Crowdray Park were once witnesses to the
adroitness of our virgin queen and her friend
Lady Desmond, who is praised by the journals
for her courtly policy. "Many a noble stag,"
they say, "returned to his lair, on the day of
the hunting-match, unscathed by the feathered
shafts of the countess, less from want of skill
than fear of displeasing her royal mistress. The
triumph of a successful arrow would have been
dearly purchased, by perpetual exile from the
sunshine of England's court, to the dreary wilds
of Connaught."

Shakespeare has expressed his own sentiments
when he makes Justice Shallow lament
the death of Old Double. "He drew a good
bow — and dead! He shot a fine shot. John
of Gaunt loved him well, and betted much
money on his head. Dead! why, he would have
clapped into the clout at twelve score, and
earned you a forehand shaft a fourteen and a
fourteen and a half, that it would have done a
man's heart good to see." In Shakespeare's
estimation, archery was the source and basis
of our national greatness. For more than six
centuries its professors had displayed courage,
discipline, strength, skill, and superiority.
Their adversaries fled at their approach; they
had but to appear and achieve a bloodless
victory. Secured in their position by an
ingenious mode of fortification — the means of
which each man carried with him — the English
archer defied the fiercest charges of the steel-
clad chivalry of the middle ages. The French,
in particular, suffered much from them, and
composed a mass in their own defence, praying
"Ab Anglicorum nos defende jaculis!" (From
the arrows of the English defend us, O Lord!)

The extreme range of a flight shaft, when
discharged from an ancient bow, was four
hundred yards, or a quarter of a mile. In the
southern parts of the kingdom, our modern
archers usually place their targets one hundred
yards apart. In northern counties they shoot
twenty yards further, or "the sixteen-rood
length." A bow commonly used by a strong
man for these distances will cast an arrow three
hundred paces if required. Modern toxopholitcs,
however, differ from their forefathers
in the size and strength of their bows, and
the length of the arrow. For the latter, the
measure of three feet is no longer adhered
to. Our ancestors employed arrows for various
purposes, as well as for those of warfare. They
were sometimes discharged at night with
flaming combustible matter attached to them,
as signals, like the modern rocket, and
sometimes were used for the conveyance of letters.
Archery is now-a-days extensively encouraged
among us as the means of innocent amusement.
Thus we have the toxopholites in Regent's
Park, and great archery meetings at the Crystal
Palace, every summer. Similar meetings of
beaux and belles, for bow and arrow matches,
have been lately common in all the counties of
England.

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

THE WRECK OF THE HALSEWELL, EAST
INDIAMAN.

THE Halsewell (seven hundred and fifty-eight
tons burthen, and one of the finest ships in the
service), having been taken up by the directors
of the East India Company for a third voyage
to Coastand Bay, dropped down the river on
the 16th of November, 1785, in a perfect
condition — her men able and willing, her
commander, Captain Richard Pierce, a worthy
man of distinguished ability, and her officers
persons of unquestioned skill and experience.
She completed her lading at Gravesend, and
took in her passengers, many of them ladies,
at the Hope. They came on board smiling
or tearful; there was waving of hands and
handkerchiefs as the great floating town moved
on; she soon swept grandly round the Two
Forelands, and, that night, the white cliffs of
Kent faded down in the moonlight. It was
Sunday, when the dawn of the new year saw
the great winged vessel pass througli the Downs
with a good wind; and, the next morning she
lay in a calm off Dunnose, the great headland
of the Isle of Wight.

On Monday, the 2nd of January, 1786, at
three in the afternoon, a breeze sprung up
from the south, when they ran in shore to land
the pilot; but very thick weather coming
on in the evening, and the wind baffling,
at nine they were obliged to anchor in
eighteen-fathom water, and furled their top-
sails, but could not furl their courses, the snow
falling thick, and freezing as it fell. On
Tuesday, the 3rd, at four in the morning,
a strong gale came on from east-north-east,
and, the ship driving, they were obliged to
cut their cables and ran off to sea. At noon,
they spoke with a brig bound to Dublin;
and having put their pilot aboard her, bore
down Channel immediately. At eight in the
evening, the wind freshening and coming round
to the southward, they reefed a few sails.

The weather grew worse; rough, wild, and
threatening. At ten that night there was a
raging gale from the south, and they were
obliged to carry a press of sail to keep off the