lève without being played, the player loses a stroke." The number and difficulty of the rules will be highly esteemed by those metaphysical golfers who bombard the Committee of the Royal and Ancient Club with questions passing the wit of man to solve ! The Committee would be grateful if those inquirers would expend their subtlety in translating the rules of the jeu de mail. My author says nothing about lady players, and does not even contemplate their existence. He gives suggestions for the making of short Malls in the grounds of country houses, but this appears to be an invention of his own. Ladies did play. Queen Mary was accused of amusing herself at jeu de mail a few days after the decease of her husband, Darnley, who was so unfortunate as to die early, when his house was blown up, in circumstances never satisfactorily explained. Probably she used a private Mall at the house of Lord Setoun. The little Dutch girl in Flinck's portrait has so many jewels that her father may have been a rich man, able to afford a small private Mall of his own. In our own Mall the Duke of York (James II.) played constantly, and conversed with Mr Pepys on National Defence. James was a very long driver; he could drive the Mall in one stroke, and an iron shot short stroke at least, and he was also a famous golfer and a keen curler. After Dutch a William came I do not know that the game of Pall Mall continued to be played in England; and except in the Montpelier form of la chicane, across country or along a road, it is quite extinct on the Continent. Nevertheless it was, as Lauthier says, "a noble game," and croquet seems to be its very dull and decadent descendant. SaintSimon says that the jeu de mail was going out when he wrote, about 1730-1740, and tennis also was ceasing to be the great game of France. People took to an indoors life of flirting, playing cards, and talking philosophy, and the great age of games in France was the fifteenth century, though I do not know any mention of jeu de mail till a century later. (Here I must confess that I am not perfectly certain about the lève of the little girl in Flinck's portrait. Some may see in it a miniature form of the curious spud which the shepherds of Bethlehem carry in miniatures in fifteenth-century MSS., as does Philip Lord Wharton in Vandyck's famous portrait. Madame de Pompadour, in a portrait of her as a shepherdess, has such a spud. But that shown in Flinck's portrait would have been useless for the practical purposes of a spud-it is much too slim and light. In Lauthier's sketch of a man playing at passe the slim club has certainly a deep narrow spoon-head, but it is not distinctly made of iron.) THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL. BY HENRY NEWBOLT. Scene-AN ENGLISH GARDEN BY STARLIGHT. Persons-A LADY AND A POET. THE POET. DIMLY I see your face: I hear your breath THE LADY (aloud). O Night divine, O Darkness ever blest, THE POET. A thousand ages have not made less bright THE LADY. Yes, hearts will burn when all the stars are cold; Mankind has left her for a game of toys, THE POET. Think you the human heart no longer feels Because it loves the swift delight of wheels? And is not Change our one true guide on earth, The surest hand that leads us from our birth? THE LADY. Change were not always loss, if we could keep Beneath all change a clear and windless deep: But more and more the tides that through us roll Disturb the very sea-bed of the soul. THE POET. The foam of transient passions cannot fret THE LADY. So-to the desert, once in fifty years- THE POET. Not ours perhaps: a nation still so young, THE LADY. Is not the hour gone by? The mystic strain, THE POET. Yet may the ilex, of more ancient birth, THE LADY. A poet's dream was never yet less great THE POET. May Venus bend me to no harder task! THE LADY. Your young Italian-yes! I saw you stand THE POET. Yet from his eyes the mirth a moment glanced THE LADY. Tell me!-from where I watched I saw his face, THE POEТ. He asked if we in England ever heard The tiny beasts, half insect and half bird, That neither eat nor sleep, but die content When they in endless song their strength have spent. THE LADY. Cicalas! how the name enchants me back THE POET. Lover of music, you at least should know THE LADY. Yes, I remember now the voice that speaks- THE POET. They are reborn on earth, and from the first THE LADY. They are reborn indeed! and rightly you THE POET. Beloved Pan, and all ye gods whose grace THE LADY. And thou O Night, O starry Queen of Air, |