we said; but the expression was incorrect, except as
a figure. Bucklers went out fifty years ago, "about the twentieth of
Queen Elizabeth"; men do not now swash with them, or fight in that way.
Iron armor has mostly gone out, except in mere pictures of soldiers;
King James said, It was an excellent invention; you could get no harm,
and neither could you do any in it. Bucklers, either for horse or foot,
are quite gone. Yet old Mr. Stowe, good chronicler, can recollect when
every gentleman had his buckler; and at length every serving man and
city dandy. Smithfield--still a waste field, full of puddles in wet
weather,--was in those days full of buckler duels, every Sunday and
holiday in the dry season; and was called Ruffian's Rig, or some such
name.

A man, in those days, bought his buckler, of gilt leather and wood, at
the haberdasher's; "hung it over his back, by a strap fastened to the
pommel of his sword in front." Elegant men showed what taste, or sense
of poetic beauty, was in them by the fashion of their buckler. With
Spanish beaver, with starched ruff, and elegant Spanish cloak, with
elegant buckler hanging at his back, a man, if his moustachios and boots
were in good order, stepped forth with some satisfaction. Full of
strange oaths, and bearded like the pard; a decidedly truculent-looking
figure. Jostle him in the street thoroughfares, accidentally splash his
boots as you pass--by heaven the buckler gets upon his arm, the sword
flashes in his fist, with oaths enough; and you too being ready, there
is a noise! Clink, clank, death and fury; all persons gathering round,
and new quarrels springing from this one! And Dogberry comes up with the
town guard? And the shopkeepers hastily close their shops? Nay, it is
hardly necessary, says Mr. Howe; these buckler fights amount only to
noise, for most part; the jingle of iron against tin and painted
leather. Ruffling swashers strutting along with big oaths and whiskers,
delight to pick a quarrel; but the rule is you do not thrust, you do not
strike below the waist; and it was oftenest a dry duel--mere noise, as
of working tinsmiths, with profane swearing! Empty vaporing bullyrooks
and braggarts, they encumber the thoroughfares mainly. Dogberry and
Verges ought to apprehend them. I have seen, in Smithfield, on a dry
holiday, "thirty of them on a side," fighting and hammering as if for
life; and was not at the pains to look at them, the blockheads; their
noise as the mere b