The reason of leaving off the long hauberks, and substituting platearmour, was the weight of the chain-mail, with its accompanying gar ments indeed it was so great, that sometimes the knights were suffocuted in it when the heat was excessive; for although the plate-armour was very heavy, it was less so than the coat of mail with the wambais, the plastron, and the surcoat, because there was no need of either of the two former under a cuirass of steel; besides if it was of well-tempered metal, it was neither pierced nor bent by the thrust of the lance, nor pushed into the body of the knight as the mailles used to be, if the wambais, or hoketon, were ever wanting underneath.'-p. 24.

Without following Dr. Meyrick through innumerable details of the composition of plate-armour at different periods after its introduction, we shall select for notice two or three of his plates, which best exhibit its character at considerable intervals of time. The first which we shall take, is copied from a monumental effigy of a knight of the Blanchefront family at Alvechurch, in Worcestershire. Its date is precisely at the close of the fourteenth century, when we may consider plate-armour as having just made its way into common use. The throat and neck of this knight are protected by the camail, a tippet of mail joining the base of the helmet all round, and richly covered with silk. His body is cased in the cuirass and back piece, with the hauberk, still of mail, and an exterior military garment terminating in a puckered apron. The fronts of his thighs seem guarded by plates, and both the legs, from the knees downwards, and the arms, are enclosed in steel casings of two hollow half cylinders, opening and shutting round the limbs by hinges and clasps at the sides. The joints are secured by other plates splendidly ornamented, as well as the shield, which is much smaller than in earlier times. The hands are guarded by plated gauntlets divided at the fingers, and the helmet, of the basinet or scull-cap kind, has its moveable vizor.

From the time when armour passed from the mailed to the mixed character, the helmet had been undergoing continual changes until this epoch; the object, always in some degree imperfectly attained, being, of course, security to the face. The helmet, from being cylindrical, was first made conical, closed all round with a grating for breath and sight; then was introduced the moveable vizor in one piece, pierced as usual, and fastened on pivots to the sides of the basinet to raise at pleasure; and at last, early in the fifteenth century, a covering for the face was invented of several overlapping plates which were drawn up from the chin. This was the bever, which, as being raised over the mouth, was probably so called, in contradistinction to the common vizor, from the Italian bevere to drink. The crest surmount

ing the helmet, with a flowing scarf, came first into fashion in the thirteenth century, but we think with Dr. Meyrick, that plumes of feathers were not of earlier use than the beginning of the fifteenth century. The story of the Black Prince adopting the plume of ostrich feathers from the helmet of the king of Bohemia, who fell at Crecy, is evidently erroneous. The plume was a device which young Edward assumed from that monarch's banner, not his helmet.

With all its contrivances, face-armour was defective; and therefore the countenance was usually aimed at in charging with the lance. In the tournament and the battle the knight on this account bent down his head in the assault to leave the face as little exposed as possible. Such is the attitude in an illumination introduced into the initial of the reign of Henry IV., and the custom has not escaped the observation of our poet of chivalry, Sir Walter Scott, who has graced the learning of an antiquary with qualities not always found in combination with it, a splendid imagination and unerring taste.

'He stooped his head, and couched his spear,

And spurred his steed in full career.'

Chandos, that flowre of chivalre,' received his death-wound in the Spanish war of the Black Prince, by a lance which was thrust into his face under the left eye between the nose and forehead; it entered, as it was thought, into his brain, so that he fell and twice rolled over with the writhing pain: though he did not die on the spot, he never spoke more.' Such death by the lance point through the head was not uncommon in the wars of chivalry; and that Henry II. of France was thus mortally wounded in a tournament, for which games, too, a helmet of particular strength and construction was in use, proves, that to the latest days of armour, the face still remained vulnerable.

Among some interesting circumstances in the armour of the fifteenth century was the prevalence of religious and other mottos on the frontlet of the helmet, the hilt of the sword, and other parts of offensive and defensive arms; as, for example, that of the famous Talbot in the reign of Henry VI. who had for inscription on the blade of his sword: 'Sum Talboti pro vincere inimicos suos'I am Talbot's to conquer his enemies.'-'A sword,' says old Fuller, with bad Latin upon it, but good steel within it.' The cross-hilt of the weapon was often used as a crucifix in the hasty orisons of the warrior, and on this account had the word JESUS inscribed on some part of it.

But we must pass through a brilliant series of highly ornamented examples of armour, to the famous suit at the Tower which unquestionably belonged to Henry VII. and may illustrate the

perfection

perfection of the art. Nothing can exceed the splendour of this suit, as exhibited in Dr. Meyrick's drawing, covered with engraving and accompanied by a complete harness of steel for the charger on which it is mounted. Another plate of the Emperor Maximilian Ibn horseback, from a rare print, does not yield to it, however, in the elegant form of the armour, the elaborate workmanship of the steel, and the tasteful choice of embellishment. Indeed it is evident from this work that military costume had reached, at the latter part of the fifteenth century, the highest degree of splendour of which it was capable. The disuse of the surcoat, and the transfer of its armorial blazonry, in relief or engraving, to the polished steel, had introduced great variety of decoration. The Italians in particular were famous for this workmanship, and the fashions and the skill of the Milanese armourers were imperfectly copied and emu lated in other countries.

In the plate of Henry VII. the puckered skirts of the Blanchefront effigy appear no longer in cloth, but in steel. Pauldrons of the same materials cover and give additional protection to the shoulders; the whole frame is impervious to the lance point; and the plumed helmet completes the panoply. Besides the sword, the thin bladed dagger of the times hangs in its sheath at the girdle on the right side. The use of this dagger had become general since the introduction of plate-armour. It was carried by the knight to dispatch his dismounted and recumbent antagonist by its insertion through the interstices of armour which the lance could not penetrate. It was called the misericorde, because the time of its display was the moment when the worsted cavalier cried for mercy. Among other points of research our limits compel us to pass briefly over-horse armour, with the observation that it seems to have been first used, partially and in mail, before the end of the thirteenth century, and kept pace with other improvements in arms until the charger, as in the plate of Henry VII. came to be fully barded with steel over the head, the chest, the back, and the flanks. In the representation of Maximilian, even the legs of the horse are guarded by narrow plates with joints at the knees and fetlocks; but this was not an usual circumstance.

The perfection of armour in the fifteenth century, while small fire-arms were either not yet in general use or had not been rendered very efficacious, had a singular and unexampled influence upon the state of warfare. For once and for once only in the history of mankind, as an elegant modern writer has observed, the art of defence had outstripped that of destruction. In a charge of lancers many fell unhorsed by the shock and might be suffocated or bruised to death by the pressure of their own armour; but the lance's point could not penetrate the cuirass, the arrow and the quarrel of the

cross-bow glanced away from the well rivetted plates, and the stroke of the sword rang harmlessly upon the helmet, the brassarts and the cuisses of proof. While infantry were powerless and, destitute of physical solidity, and armies were numbered only by their array of cuirassiers, battles which were to decide the fate of nations scarcely differed from tournaments à l'outrance, or with sharp lances. The prostrate warrior yielded himself before the upraised dagger of his foe, his ransom was regulated by his rank, and while the miserable footmen were slaughtered without mercy in the pursuit, whenever they were dragged into the field by their feudal lords, the vanquished knight was spared by the avarice if not by the humanity of his conqueror. Thus may the bearing of Antient Pistol to his prisoner be received as a touch of the times.

Boy. He prays you to save his life; he is a gentleman of good house, and for his ransome he will give you two hundred crowns,

Pistol. Tell him-my fury shall abate, and I

The crowns will take.

As I suck blood, I will some mercy shew.'

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Still, however, with all the security against wounds which platearmour afforded, it was attended with many disadvantages. Its enormous weight crippled the limbs and exhausted the strength; the rays of the sun, in warm climates especially, rendered its heat unsupportable; and under some circumstances, as in the passage of a river or morass, the danger of death was increased by its unwieldiness. The slightest intrenchment or difficulty of ground was sufficient to stop the advance of an army; and so impossible was it to oblige an enemy to fight, that (particularly in the frequent Italian wars) it was necessary to level the ground, like the lists of a tournament, on which it was intended by mutual consent to engage. In the French wars of Henry V. which continued in his son's reign, we find the chivalry dismounting to engage on foot with the lance; but this courageous expedient for coming to close quarters, which had been long an English practice, must have been extremely embarrassing with the ponderous equipment of the fifteenth century.

The indissoluble firmness of the forests of pikes which the Swiss infantry opposed in the middle of that century to the proud array of Charles of Burgundy, gave the first check to the hitherto overwhelming force of the old chivalry, and it is from this epoch, that we date the commencement of the last period of armorial history. But one hundred and fifty years were yet to pass before the mixture of musketeers with pikemen gave a decided superiority to infantry. This is not the place to mark the course of invention and improvement by which fire-arms reached their mur

derous

derous completion; but experience had scarcely convinced the military world of the inefficacy of steel harness to resist the death shot of the arquebuss and musket, when our James I. wittily' expressed his pacific admiration of armour: He could not,' he said, but greatly praise armour, as it not only protected the wearer, but also prevented him from injuring any other person.' The warriors of his times, however, began to discover that it lacked the best part of these qualities. They first laid aside the jambes or steel boots; then the shield was abandoned, and next the covering for the arms. When the cavalry disused the lance, the cuisses were no longer worn to guard against its thrust, and the stout leathern or buffcoat hung down from beneath the body-armour to the knees, and supplied the place of the discarded steel. The helmet was later deprived of its useless vizor, but before the middle of the seventeenth century nothing remained of the ancient harness but the open cap and the breasts and backs of steel, which the heavy cavalry of the continent have more or less worn to our times. lu our service these have been but lately revived for the equipment of the finest cavalry in Europe, the British Life-guards, who, unaided by such defences, tore the laurels of Waterloo from the cuirassiers of France.

ART. III.-History of a Voyage to the China Sea. By John White, Lieutenant in the United States Navy. Boston. 8vo.

1823.

WE have two reasons for noticing this little volume; the first is, that we know the author to be a respectable man, and worthy of credit; and the second, that it affords us a peep into one of those corners of the globe, of which we possess little or no information; because the barbarous but conceited inhabitants, in imitation of their somewhat more civilized and more conceited neighbours, affect to consider all the world, besides themselves, at best as one-eyed barbarians, and seek neither the means of intercourse nor improvement. The country to which we allude is the southern extremity of that long neck of land which lies between the two gulphs of Siam and Tonquin, and which, on our charts, is called Cambodia, an evident corruption of the Chinese name Kan-phou-chi. This rump, as it may be termed, of the Chinese empire, has for some time past been governed by the king of Cochin-china, the person whom the French bishop D'Adran, during a rebellion, assisted very materially in the recovery of his kingdom, and whose son, then a boy, he carried to France and presented to Louis XVI. He, with his father, is since dead; and, as is usual with the unsettled governments of the East,

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