Sometimes the ladies and young men indulged within doors in more active games--among which we may mention especially different games with the ball, and also, perhaps, the whipping-top. We learn from many sources that hand-ball was from a very early period a favourite recreation with the youth of both sexes. It is a subject not unfrequently met with in the marginal drawings of mediæval manuscripts. The annexed example (cut No. 164), from MS. Harl. No. 6563, represents apparently two ladies playing with a ball. In other instances, a lady and a gentleman are similarly occupied. Our cut No. 165 is taken from one of the carvings of the _miserere_ seats in Gloucester cathedral. The long tails of the hoods belong to the costume of the latter part of the fourteenth century. The whipping-top was also a plaything of considerable antiquity; I think it may be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period. Our cut No. 166 is taken from one of the marginal drawings of a well-known manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.) of the beginning of the fourteenth century. It may be remarked that the knots on the lashes merely mark a conventional manner of representing a whip, for every boy knows that a knotted whip would not do for a top. Mediæval art was full of such conventionalities. [Illustration: _No. 165. A Game at Ball._] [Illustration: _No. 166. Whipping-Top._] [Illustration: _No. 167. The Game of Kayles._] Most of these recreations of young people in the middle ages were gradually left to a still younger age, and became children’s games, and of these the margins of the illuminated manuscripts furnish abundant examples. One of these (taken from the margin of the Royal MS., 10 E. iv., of the fourteenth century) will be sufficient for the present occasion. A favourite game, during at least the later periods of the middle ages, was that which is now called nine-pins. The French gave it the name _quilles_, which in our language was corrupted into _keyles_ and _kayles_. The lad in our cut (No. 167) is not, as at present, bowling at the pins, but throwing with a stick, a form of the game which was called in French the _jeu de quilles à baston_, and in English _club-kayles_. Money was apparently played for, and the game was looked upon as belonging to the same class as hazard. In a series of metrical counsels to apprentices, compiled in the fifteenth century, and printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ,” ii. 223, they are recommended to-- _Exchewe allewey eville company_, _Caylys, _carding, and haserdy_.