[Illustration: Fig. 41.--Hand-guns, Renaissance Work.] During the “renaissance” the gunsmith and his coadjutors lavished all manner of ornamentation on pageant hand-guns and their accessories. Barrels were chastely engraved, and stocks inlaid with bleached stag horn, silver, gold, steel, brass, stained wood, and mother-of-pearl; but these highly decorated weapons were not so much for real campaigning as for the use of body-guards, palace troops, and purposes of display generally, and especially for the hunting-field. Fig. 41 represents three of these enriched weapons, inlaid with bleached stag’s horn. They are late sixteenth or early seventeenth century work. The weapon of the Harquebusier and Musketeer was much plainer; and the matchlock was preferred to the wheel-lock by reason of its greater rapidity of discharge. There were, however, corps, especially cavalry, armed with wheel-lock weapons. The use of the longbow, which had for so many centuries played a predominant part in the combinations of English campaigning, had gradually languished with the greater mobility and precision of firearms; and the bayonet was soon destined to add new lustre to the British name. An order in Council of 26th October, 1595, ordains that the bows of the trained bands were to be handed into store, and calivers and muskets issued in their stead. In the year 1638 the stock of bows and arrows was omitted altogether from inventories of arms, thus showing that the weapon had become obsolete. PART XVI. THE SWORD. The sword has always been the most universal of weapons among almost all nations and ages. It is alike the symbol of honour and the vindicator of justice; though often, alas, the instrument of oppression. The history of the sword is almost that of humanity itself, and supernatural attributes have often been ascribed to it. There is something about an ancient sword that appeals to the dullest imagination--it is so suggestive of historic memories, both in heroism and treason. It is typical of the force behind the law; but the living sword of our forefathers is now but a memory. It would be fascinating to follow its forms, traditions, and ramifications from the “stone age,” and from Menes to Julius Cæsar and Charlemagne--in fact, something like such an enterprise was begun by Sir Richard F. Burton. His book is indeed “A Romance of the Sword,” but the priceless stores of information he has collaborated, and his fine florid imagination, help us but little in the present quest: sad it is that his researches stop at such an early stage.