unpretending, and, it must be said, unmeritorious kind. His lordship had heard them at a school-feast, or school-treat, when the young doctor and his wife had come forward, for the amusement of the children, to sing a sort of musical quarrel and reconcilement, in alternate verses, and which was entitled "Jockie and Jeannie." This they did with some spirit under the circumstances, and the eager lord was so delighted that at the close he introduced himself, and insisted on their coming at once to Garterley. Alas! it now sounded very different; they wanted the freedom which the presence of the children gave. Here the simple wranglings of Jockie and Jeannie sounded flat. The performers were overawed by the company, who really did not follow the humour of the thing, such as it was. And though the young doctor did his best, with desperation almost, still his lady-a good-humoured unsophisticated country person, in a rich blue silk purchased for the occasion, and a cameo brooch-divided between the piano and the cold, amused looks of the guests, made no success. A cloud came over the face of the host, who had gone round announcing what a remarkable display of native humour and poignancy they were about to witness, and who had remained leaning on his elbows at the end of the piano, and staring into their faces. At the end he said in a loud voice, "You didn't sing that in the way I first heard you; it's not the same thing.' Much abashed and sinking under the reproof, the unhappy pair found their way back to their corner, discredited, and feeling like impostors. His lordship, indeed, thought as much, and was petulant-with himself chiefly.

"What is over them, Webber? Why do they keep in that corner?"

Webber at once galloped across the field; brought them out; put Mrs. MacIvor beside the parson, and conversed a few moments with the doctor. Something must be done to redeem the mistake, and keep his lordship in good humour. Here was the young law-student, a natural young fellow enough, who at once volunteered; and gave out, certainly in a charming tenor, the old ballad of "She wore a wreath of roses,' ," which touched everybody present. Even the Grazielli, a stately, full-blown personage, quite at her ease, signified her approbation.

This was the sort of thing that usually went on at Garterley, and was to go on for some ten days, which made the time

very difficult to get through. Indeed, but for the sense of duty towards daughters, and the chance of its offering opportunities which no conscientious matron would feel justified in putting aside, the place would have been held but in ill odour. Everyone knew, and was rather tired of, the indiscriminate Lord Garterley, whose poems, written when he was the Hon. Hugh Chevron, had been before the public since the days of the pink-silk annuals.

The adroit Charles Webbers knew perfectly well that a sort of variety must be imported; and, by way of "refresher," had distributed the guests so that they should arrive in succession. Accordingly, it was not till a couple of days later that the ancient vehicles of the Pringle family drove up, containing five persons-the mother and father, the two ponies, and our hero of the garden-gate, Alfred. This irruption, which took place a short time before dinner, made a considerable diversion, as Sam Pringle was considered to be "such a prime old card." He was, indeed, in such good spirits, that, as they drove up the avenue, Mrs. Pringle turned to him, and said, "Now I conjure you, Mr. Pringle, do show some respect for yourself and your family, and don't make us ridiculous"an appeal he was in much too good a humour to resent, and to which his only answer was a most significant wink. These were holidays for him; he liked good wines and rich fare. His son Alfred, who had a contempt for the paternal antics that was not to be expressed, was reserved and moody. He was still thinking of the apparition at the garden-gate, and of that most romantic adventure. He felt he was thrown away in the world generally, and not in the mood for festivity. They had hardly made their entry into the drawing-room, at the general assembly before going into dinner, when the incorrigible Sam Pringle began. The host, who was amused by him, received him with alacrity.

"Ha! Pringle, how de do? Brought all your jokes I hope-old ones as well as some new- —eh ? "

"Well, indeed, my lord, I have had 'em done up, and altered, and re-lined, like my lady and her girls; who have been hard at work, cutting up, and ironing, and clearstarching for the last week, all in honour of this most illustrious event."

"Ha, ha! very good," said his lordship. Then came the state banquet, when Sam grew more and more exuberant, talking

Houses of Parliament, in 1647, the ordinance by virtue of which the theatres were to be dismantled and suppressed; all actors of plays to be publicly whipped; and all spectators and playgoers, for every offence, condemned to forfeit five shillings. This was the coup de grâce; for the stage had already undergone many and severe assaults. The player's tenure of his art had become more and more precarious, until acting seemed to be as a service of danger. The ordinance of 1647 closed the theatres for nearly fourteen years; but, for some sixteen years before, the stage had been in a more or less depressed condition. Scarcely any new dramatists of distinction had appeared after 1630. The theatres were considerably reduced in number by the time 1636 was arrived at. Then came arbitrary closing of the playhouses-professedly but for a season. Thus in 1636 they were closed for ten months; in 1642 for eighteen months. In truth, Puritanism carried on its victorious campaign against the drama for something like thirty years; while even at an earlier date there had been certain skirmishing attacks upon the stage. With the first Puritan began the quarrel with the players. As Isaac Disraeli has observed, "we must go back to the reign of Elizabeth, to comprehend an event which occurred in that of Charles the First." A sanctimonious sect urged extravagant reforms-at first, perhaps, in all simplicity-founding their opinions upon cramped and literal interpretations of divine precepts, and forming views of human nature "more practicable in a desert than a city, and rather suited to a monastic order than to a polished people." Still, these fanatics could scarcely have dreamed that power would ever be given them to carry their peculiar theories into practice, and to govern a nation as though it were composed entirely of precisians and bigots. For two generations-from the Reformation to the Civil War-the Puritans had been the butt of the satirical, the jest of the wits-ridiculed and laughed at on all sides. Then came a time, "when," in the words of Macaulay, "the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers."

Yet from the first the Puritans had not neglected the pen as a weapon of offence. In 1579 Stephen Gosson published his curious pamphlet bearing the lengthy title

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of "The Schoole of Abuse, containing a pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Jesters, and such like Catterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, and over-throwing their Bulwarks, by Profane Writers, natural reason, and common experience: A Discourse as pleasant for tlemen that favour learning as profitable for all that will follow virtue." Gosson expresses himself with much quaint force, but he is not absolutely intolerant. He was a student of Oxford University, had in his youth written poems and plays, and even appeared upon the scene as an actor. Although he had repented of these follies, he still viewed them without acrimony. To his pamphlet we are indebted for certain interesting details, in regard to the manners and customs of the Elizabethan playgoers. A further attack upon the theatre was led by Dr. Reynolds, of Queen's College, who was greatly troubled by the performance of a play at Christchurch, and who published, in 1593, The Overthrow of Stage Plays, described by Disraeli as "a tedious invective, foaming at the mouth of its text with quotations and authorities." Reynolds was especially severe upon "the sin of boys wearing the dress and affecting the airs of women;" and thus unconsciously helped on a change he would have regarded as still more deplorable-the appearance of actresses upon the stage. But a fiercer far than Reynolds was to arise. In 1633 Prynne produced his HistrioMastix; or, The Player's Scourge, a monstrous work of more than a thousand closely-printed quarto pages, devoted to the most searching indictment of the stage and its votaries. The author has been described as a man of great learning, but little judgment; of sour and austere principles, but wholly deficient in candour. His book was judged libellous, for he had unwittingly aspersed the Queen in his attack upon the masques performed at Court. He was cited in the Star Chamber, and sentenced to stand in the pillory, to lose both ears, to pay a heavy fine, and to undergo imprisonment for life. This severe punishment probably stimulated the Puritans, when opportunity came to them, to deal mercilessly with the actors, by way of avenging Prynne's wrongs, or of expressing sympathy with his sufferings.

And it is to be noted that early legislation in regard to the players had been far from lenient. For such actors as had obtained the countenance of "any Baron

Realme," or "any other honourable age of greater degree," exception was made; otherwise, all common players in interludes, all fencers, bearwards, and minstrels were declared by an Act passed in the fourteenth year of Elizabeth to be rogues and vagabonds, and, whether male or female, liable on a first conviction "to be grievously whipped and burned through the gristle of the right ear with an hot iron of the compass of an inch about, manifesting his or her roguish kind of life." A second offence was adjudged to be felony; a third entailed death without benefit of clergy, or privilege of sanctuary. Meanwhile, the regular companies of players, to whom this harsh Act did not apply, were not left unmolested. The Court might encourage them, but the City would have none of them. They had long been accustomed to perform in the yards of the City inns, but an order of the Common Council, dated December, 1575, expelled the players from the City Thereupon public playhouses were erected outside the "liberties" or boundaries of the City. The first was probably the theatre in Shoreditch; the second, opened in its immediate neighbourhood, was known as the Curtain; the third, built by John Burbadge and other of the Earl of Leicester's company of players, was the famous Blackfriars Theatre. These were all erected about 1576, and other playhouses were opened soon afterwards. Probably to avoid the penalties of the Act of Elizabeth, all strolling and unattached players made haste to join regular companies, or to shelter themselves under noble patronage. And now the Church raised its voice, and a controversy which still possesses some vitality touching the morality or immorality of playhouses, plays, and players, was fairly and formally entered upon. A sermon preached at Paul's Cross, November, 1577, "in the time of the plague," by the Rev. T. Wilcocks, denounced in strong language the "common plays" in London, and the multitude that flocked to them and followed them, and described "the sumptuous theatre houses as a continual monument of London's prodigality and folly. Performances, it seems, had for a while been forbidden because of the plague. "I like the policy well if it hold still," said the preacher; "for a disease is but bodged and patched up that is not cured in the cause, and the cause of plagues is sin, if you look to it well; and the cause of sin are playes; therefore, the

cause of plagues are playes." It is clear, too, that the clergy had become affected by a certain jealousy of the players, the sound of whose trumpet attracted more attention than the ringing of the churchbells, and brought together a larger audience. John Stockwood, schoolmaster of Tunbridge, who preached at Paul's Cross on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1578, demanded, "Will not a filthy play, with the blast of a trumpet, sooner call thither a thousand, than an hour's tolling bring to the sermon a hundred ?" It was, moreover, an especial grievance to the devout at this period that plays were represented on a Sunday, the church and the theatre being thus brought into positive rivalry and antagonism. The clergy saw with dismay that their congregations were thin and listless, while crowded and excited audiences rewarded the exertions of the players. Mr. Stockwood, declining to discuss whether plays were or not wholly unlawful, yet protested with good reason that in a Christian commonwealth they were intolerable on the seventh day, and exclaimed against the "horrible profanity" and "devilish inventions" of the lords of misrule, morrice and May-day dancers, whom he accused of tripping about the church, even during the hours of service, and of figuring in costumes, which, by their texture and scantiness, outraged ordinary notions of decency.

But notwithstanding this old-established opposition to the theatres on the part of both Churchmen and Puritans, and the severe oppression of the players by the authorities, it is yet indisputable that the English were essentially a playgoing people; proud, as well they might be, of the fact that they possessed the finest drama and the best actors in the world. And, allowing for the licence and grossness which the times permitted, if they did not encourage it, and a certain liberty of speech and action allowed time out of mind to the clowns of the stage, the drama suppressed by the Puritans was of sound and wholesome constitution, rich in poetry of the noblest class. It is sufficient to say, indeed, that it was the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. To a very large class, therefore, the persecution of the players, and the suppression of the stage, must have been grave misfortune and real privation. To many the theatre still supplied, not merely recreation, but education and enlightenment as well. But that there was any rising of the public