sally delighted in, even more as a health-giving, manly recreation than as a puerile sport. Cato the Elder played at pila in the Campus Martius on the very day he had been accepted as a candidate for the Consulate." Another authority, Becker, in his "Gallus," says: "While in modern times games are confined to the period of youth, in Rome, on the contrary, there was not the slightest idea of impropriety when the consul or triumphator, the world raling Cæsar himself, sought in the game of ball . . an exertion wholesome for both body and mind, and they who omitted such exercises were accused of indolence." Cicero was one of the few men of consequence who were exceptions to the general rule, though Augustus, according to Suetonius, showed his increasing love for ease by deserting first the more energetic outdoor exercises for the pila and folliculus, and then, after a time, discontinuing even these gentle games at ball.

The follis, or follis pugilatorius as Plautus calls it, was a large inflated ball of leather, light and easily knocked about; in one of his epigrams, Martial tells us that the pastime in which it was used was the peculiar game of old men and boys :

Ite procul juvenes, mitis mihi, convenit ætas ;
Folle decet pueros ludere, folle senes.

Begone swift-footed, fiercely swiping youth,
From me, too old for racketings uncouth;

Old age, a second childhood, needs must fall

Back upon childhood's large, light, soft, slow bal!.

"The folliculus," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review, "was merely a smaller follis, apparently about the same size as the paganica, also a middle-sized ball, stuffed with feathers, and therefore harder than the follis, which was only filled with air, but tenderer than the pila, which was probably as hard and heavy as our tennis ball. Martial mentions all the three principal balls in a couplet

Haec quæ difficili turget Paganica plumâ
Folle minus laxa est et minus arcta pilâ.

"This paganica stuffed with stiff feathers is of tougher substance than the balloon, but of less compact substance than the tennis ball; laxa and arcta, as describing looseness and tightness of girth, beside difference of substance, imply difference of bulk."

It is probable that, in process of time, as the heavier folliculus supplanted the follis in the fisting game, some protection to the hand and aid in striking became necessary. "If we may trust," says Becker, "the copy given by Mercurialis (De Arte Gymnast) of a coin of Gordian III., the right arm was sometimes equipped with a sort of glove to assist in striking." For the same reason in most of the later traces of the game, both in Italy and in other countries, we find some kind of implement employed. It has been held, because the ball in early delineations of players at "club-ball"—the germ from which sprang cricket—is a very large light sphere, that balloon may have been the parent of this game, and therefore of the English national game of to-day; but the evidence of this is very slight, even though Dr. A. L. Fisher, in his treatise on the Italian game of "Pallone," tells us that in an old book of games published at Venice in 1555, there is "a representation of a heavy wooden club about two feet long, called 'scanno,' which, according to the description given of it, was used instead of the bracciale [the Pallone bracer] for the purpose of striking the ball." This scanno and its ball are certainly very like the club and ball that Strutt engraves from a drawing in the genealogical roll of the Kings of England to the time of Henry III., but there is great doubt whether the scanno was ever used in Pallone, though this suggests an interesting question whether a game something like cricket may not have been played by the Italians three centuries ago.

Balloon ball, however, in its pure form—that is, played with or without a hand-guard, as the legitimate descendant of the Roman follis-there is little doubt existed in England at a very early period. Strutt quotes from Commenius a descrip

tion of it as "a large ball made of double leather, which, being filled with wind by means of a ventil, was driven to and fro by the strength of men's arms; and for this purpose every one of the players had a round hollow bracer of wood to cover the hand and lower part of the arm with which he struck the ball. This pastime was usually practised in the open fields, and is much commended for the healthiness of the exercise it afforded."

Strutt, however, is inclined to believe that balloon ball was originally played in England without the assistance of the bracer; "this supposition," he says, "will be perfectly established if it be granted—and I see no reason why it should not -that the four figures represented below are engaged in balloon play." The four figures Strutt reproduces are from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the Royal Library. In other illustrations, too-from the Harleian MSS., and one given by Mr. Thomas Wright, from a carving of the miserere seats in Gloucester Cathedral, in which the players wear the long tails to the hood belonging to the costume of the latter part of the fourteenth century—no glove or bracer is used. The inconvenience and pain of playing thus with the unprotected hand, especially as we see from some of the old drawings that this was a game of both sexes, would, however, soon suggest the employment of the bracer as described by Commenius.

Except for a short time at the beginning of the seventeenth century, balloon never seems to have become a fashionable game with the upper classes in England, as tennis or pall-mall did. It is not mentioned in King James' list of "pleasant field games," nor in any of the other records of the fashionable English games that we possess, but nevertheless it seems to have been one of the pastimes of Prince Henry, if by the "balownes," for which a Frenchman was paid for bringing him, we understand the balls used in this game. Better evidence of its reputation at this time is afforded by the following

extract from the play of "Eastward Hoe," the joint composition of Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston, published in 1605, and for which the authors were committed to prison, as some passages in it were held to reflect on the Scots. In Act I., Scene 1., Girtred, the daughter of Touchstone, a rich London goldsmith, and who affects to be a fine lady, asks Sir Petronel Flash, a poor knight, who aspires to her hand :

G. And how chance ye came no sooner, Knight?

SIR P. Faith, I was so entertained in the progress with one Count Epernoum, a Welch Knight; we had a match at baloon, too, with my Lord Whachum, for four crowns.

G. At baboon? Jesu! you and I will play at baboon in the country. SIR P. O sweet lady; 'tis a strong play with the arm.

G. With arm or leg, or any other member, if it be a Court sport.

Gervase Markham, too, in his "Country Contentments," (1615) tells us that "not inferior to these sports [archery and bowls] either for health or active exercise are the Tenish and Baloone, the first being a pastime in close or open courts, striking little round balls to and fro, either with the palm of the hand or with rackets; the other a strong and moving sport in the open fields with a great ball of double leather fild with winde, and driven to and fro with the strength of a man's arme in a bracer of wood."

In a few years, however, this game appears to have fallen out of favour as a "Court sport." Burton, indeed, expressly tells us, in the "Anatomy of Melancholy" (1660), that "balowns, running at the quintain, and the like, are common recreations of country folks," not like some other pastimes, "which are disports of greater men." Like throwing the hammer and wrestling, of which Peacham, in his "Complete Gentleman" (1622), says: "I hold them exercises not so well beseeming nobility, but rather the soldiers in the camp and the prince's guard," it was a very favourite game at rural gatherings and "feasts," where the country folk assembled, the

elders to exhibit their best bred cattle, while there were games for the lads, dancing for the maids, and a

Grassy board,

With flawns, lards, clowted cream, and country dainties stored,

for all.

The most famous of these festivals was the annual meeting that Robert Dover, a Warwickshire attorney, established at Cotswold in James I.'s time, as a countercheck to the spirit of religious austerity that would fain have put a stop to all merry and wholesome outdoor amusements. Dover had a formal authority from the king, and made the sports at "Cotsall " famous all over the kingdom during the forty years they lasted till, as Anthony Wood says, "the rascally rebellion was begun by the Presbyterians, which gave a stop to their proceedings and spoiled all that was generous and ingenious elsewhere." These sports took place at Whitsuntide, and consisted of horseracing, coursing (Master Page's fallow greyhound who was "outrun on Cotsall" would have won a silver collar if he had been best dog), wrestling, cudgel-playing, balloon, leaping, &c., for the men, with dancing for the maidens.

Burton's allusion to balloon in his Anatomy appears to be the latest in existence. Strutt thinks that Tom D'Urfey may have meant to include it in the expression "Olympian Games," in his reference to the pastimes of Charles II.'s reign, but it seems certainly to have died out with the Stuarts in England.

While, then, in Britain this game was only for a short time in the front rank of pastimes, on the Continent, and especially in Italy, it has ever been, until quite recent years, held in the highest esteem. Books have been written there in the past to show the athletic and manly character of this "game of giants," while Italian municipalities have built courts for the sport, and public bodies have set up busts of famous players. Pallone in those times caused a furore throughout Italy, and, even up to about forty years ago, Dr. Fisher, in his little work on the game