gallant field captain, signalising not only the shooters, but the whole company of spectators, to march in array to the opposite mark.” Here we leave them for the nonce, presuming to add only one word of advice, proffered by a veteran who has heard the bugle call in many and many an archery-foughten field. First, then, be it remarked, that during this present season of 1864 there will be an accession of archers to the national muster-roll seven times greater than any previous year has witnessed. An enthusiastic determination also to excel in the practice of this perfectly national sport animates the score or so of professors in both sexes who have hitherto borne away the palm of merit and struggled for the champion-medal, the first flight, the crême de la crême, of England’s modern bowmen and bowwomen. To win and wear for more than a very brief period this prized distinction of archery merit, is a stroke of good fortune not likely to fall to any single competitor. There are too many of our best toxophilites who exhibit a near equality of adroitness, and who, if they choose, can so fortify themselves by judicious training as to realise any score they please, to allow of long exclusive possession of the championship. We assert, it will be again and again lost and won, until ladies, and gentlemen likewise, throw aside their present passion for attitudinising, and settle down to sensible and regular practice. No shooter, were he to devote half his life to studying the position of Apollo Belvidere, would, from that kind of drill, be able to hit a haystack. There is another very prevalent delusion, viz., that certain archers have already attained to their uttermost maximum of skill, and must now retrograde. This is somewhat too rash, and contrary to all the known results of energetic, persistent labour. The student of any art retrogrades only when he ceases to practise. He is brought to a standstill when his practice is insufficient; and no modern archer that we have known practises one-fourth part of what the object he aims at demands. Two hours daily promenading in an archery ground, will never put the promenader in possession of the championship, he may rest assured. No; let fair dames, as well as their attendant squires—and many of our rustic beauties possess a healthy constitutional physique which no sensible man would wish to see diminished—let them, we say, cultivate assiduously the biceps muscle of the forearm, with a correspondent increase of power and expansion of chest. When every bunch of fleshy fibre on the breast and shoulder stands out in bold relief during exercise, as if carved in bronze against a surface of ivory, then may an archer’s drill be said to have approached the end desired. “To know how to shoot an arrow is the first and most important accomplishment,” exclaimed a Manchoo Tartar warrior; “for though success seems easy, it is of rare attainment. How many are there who sleep with the bow in their arms, and yet how few have made themselves famous. How few are there whose names are proclaimed at the matches. Keep your body straight and firm; avoid vicious postures; let your shoulders be immoveable; and shoot every arrow into its mark. Then, and then only, may you be satisfied with your skill.”
Such were the rules of discipline pursued by those vast hordes of equestrian archers who, under Timoor, their emperor, subjugated all Asia, from the Chinese wall to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Referring once again to a very grateful theme, namely, the part which ladies have contributed to the present extension of archery, we would observe that their appearance in the shooting fields is by no means a modern fashion of the sex. Queen Elizabeth maintained amongst her household a master and keeper of her cross and long bows. Her poor prisoner and subsequent victim, unhappy Mary Stuart, sometimes essayed, but vainly, as it would appear, to banish troubled thoughts by archery exercise, which has been always deemed an admirable temporary relief to the harassed spirits. “This ladye,” writes her grim and savage keeper, the Earl of Shrewsbury, to his mistress the queen, “hathe begone this Monday, being the 8th of Maye, to exercise her longe bowe agen with her folkes, with troboled mynde as I thynk.” The Marchioness of Salisbury, wife to Cecil, King James the First’s Lord Treasurer, fancying she could work wonders with her bow and arrows amongst her husband’s game preserves, obliges a near relative, Lord Hertford, to escort her hither and thither with that intent; and his lordship indites a merry postscript, descriptive of the caprices of the beautiful archeress. “And now,” he says, in a State Paper letter, “to draw myself out of melancholy, and entertain your grave affair with pleasant conceits, I must acquaint you with my lady your wife’s inveterate malice against the poor rabbits and conies of your castle warren of Old Sarum. She went thither without me on Tuesday last with bows and arrows, reckoning to murther many, and to have forthwith sent them unto you; nay, if she had killed but one, that one should have been sent, I assure you. Happily, as she thought, after some small pains taken, when she could kill none, she revenged herself upon a stout cock of the game, belonging to your lordship’s keeper, who was absent,