hall-window." It might be expected that the women were ignorant enough when very few men knew how to write correctly or even intelligibly, and it had become unnecessary for clergymen to read the Scriptures in the original tongues. lic lanterns. As a necessary consequence, there were plenty of shoplifters, highwaymen, and burglars. As to the moral condition, it is fearfully expressed in the statement that men not unfrequently were willing to sacrifice their country for their religion. Hardly any personage died who was not popularly suspected to have been made away with by poison, an indication of the morality generally supposed to prevail among the higher classes. If such was the state of society in its serious aspect, it was no better in its lighter. We can scarcely credit the impurity and immodesty of the theatrical exhibitions. What is said about them would be beyond belief if we did not remember that they were the amusements of a community whose ideas of female modesty and female sentiment were alto Social discipline was very far from being of that kind which we call moral. The master whipped his apprentice, the pedagogue his scholar, the husband his wife. Public punishments partook of the general brutality. It was a day for the rabble when some culprit was set in the pillory to be pelted with brickbats, rotten eggs, and dead cats; when women were fastened by the legs in the stocks at the market-place, or a pilferer flogged through the town at the carttail, a clamor not unfrequently arising unless the lash were laid on hard enough "to make him howl." In punishments of higher offend-gether different from ours. Indecent jests were ers these whippings were perfectly horrible; thus Titus Oates, after standing twice in the pillory, was whipped, and, after an interval of two days, whipped again. A virtuoso in these matters gives us the incredible information that he counted as many as seventeen hundred stripes administered. So far from the community being shocked at such an exhibition, they appeared to agree in the sentiment that, "since his face could not be made to blush, it was well enough to try what could be done with his back." Such a hardening of heart was in no little degree promoted by the atrocious punishments of state offenders: thus, after the decapitation of Montrose and Argyle, their heads decorated the top of the Tolbooth; and gentlemen, after the rising of Monmouth, were admonished to be careful of their ways, by hanging in chains to their park gate the corpse of a rebel to rot in the air. put into the mouths of lively actresses, and the dancing was not altogether of a kind to meet our approval. The rural clergy could do but little to withstand this flood of immorality. Their social position for the last hundred years had been rapidly declining; for, though the Church possessed among her dignitaries great writers and great preachers, her lower orders, partly through the political troubles that had befallen the state, but chiefly in consequence of sectarian bitterness, had been reduced to a truly menial condition. It was the business of the rich man's chaplain to add dignity to the dinner-table by saying grace "in full canonicals," but he was also intended to be a butt for the mirth of the company. "The young Levite," such was the phrase then in use, "might fill himself with the corned beef and the carrots, but as soon as the tarts and cheese-cakes made their appearance he quitted his seat, and stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast," the daintiest part of which he had not tasted. If need arose, he could curry a horse, "carry a parcel ten miles," or "cast up the farrier's bill." The "wages" of a parish priest were at starvation-point. The social degradation of the ecclesiastic is well illustrated by an order of Queen Elizabeth, that no clergyman should presume to marry a servant-girl without the consent of her master or mistress. To a debased public life private life corresponded. The houses of the rural population were covered with straw-thatch; their inmates, if able to procure fresh meat once a week, were considered to be in prosperous circumstances. One half of the families in England could hardly do that. Children of six years old were not unfrequently set to labor. The lord of the manor spent his time in rustic pursuits; was not an unwilling associate of peddlers and drovers; knew how to ring a pig or shoe a horse; his wife and daughters "stitched and spun, The clergy, however, had not fallen into this brewed gooseberry wine, cured marigolds, and condition without in a measure deserving it. made the crust for the venison pasty." Hospi- Their time had been too much occupied in pertality was displayed in immoderate eating, and secuting Puritans and other sectaries, with whom drinking of beer, the guest not being considered they would have gladly dealt in the same manas having done justice to the occasion unless he ner as they had dealt with the Jews, who, from had gone under the table. The dining-room the thirteenth century till Cromwell, were alwas uncarpeted; but then it was tinted with a together interdicted from public worship. The decoction of "soot and small-beer." The chairs University of Oxford had ordered the political were rush-bottomed. In London the houses works of Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to be were mostly of wood and plaster, the streets publicly burned in the court of the schools. filthy beyond expression. After nightfall a pas- The immortal vagabond, Bunyan, had been senger went at his peril, for chamber windows committed to jail for preaching out of his head were opened and slop-pails unceremoniously the way of salvation to the common people, and emptied down. There were no lamps in the had remained there twelve years, the stout old streets until Master Heming established his pub-man refusing to give his promise not to offend in 252 The great doctrine inculthat manner again. cated from the pulpit was submission to temporal Men were taught that rebellion is a sin power. On a communot less deadly than witchcraft. nity thirsting after the waters of life were still inflicted wearisome sermons respecting "the wearing of surplices, position at the Eucharist, or the sign of the cross at baptism," things that were a stench in the nostrils of the lank-haired Puritan, who, with his hands clasped on his bosom, his face corrugated with religious astringency, the whites of his eyes turned upward to heaven, rocking himself alternately on his heels and the tips of his toes, delivered, in a savory prayer uttered through his nose, all such abominations of the Babylonish harlot to the Devil, whose affairs they were. In administering the law, whether in relation to political or religious offenses, there was an incredible atrocity. In London, the crazy old bridge over the Thames was decorated with grinning and mouldering heads of criminals, under an idea that these ghastly spectacles would fortify the common people in their resolves to act according to law. The toleration of the times may be understood from a law en acted by the Scotch Parliament, May 8, 1685, that whoever preached or heard in a conventicle should be punished with death and the confiscation of his goods. That such an infamous spirit did not content itself with mere dead-letter laws there is too much practical evidence to permit A silly laboring man, who any one to doubt. had taken it into his head that he could not conscientiously attend the Episcopal worship, was seized by a troop of soldiers," rapidly examined, convicted of non-conformity, and sentenced to death in the presence of his wife, who led one little child by the hand, and it was easy to see was about to give birth to another. He was shot before her face, the widow crying out in her agony, 'Well, Sir, well, the day of reckoning will come!' Shrieking Scotch Covenanters were submitted to torture by crushing their knees flat in the boot; women were tied to stakes on the sea-sands and drowned by the slowly advancing tide because they would not attend Episcopal worship, or branded on their cheeks and then shipped to America; gallant but wounded soldiers were hung in Scotland for fear they should die before they could be got to England. In the troubles connected with Monmouth's rising, in one county alone, Somersetshire, two hundred and thirty-three persons were hanged, drawn, and quartered, to say nothing of military executions, for the soldiers amused themselves by hanging a culprit for each toast they drank, and making the drums and fifes play, as they said, to his dancing. It is needless to recall such incidents as the ferocity of Kirk's lambs, for such was the name popularly given to the soldiers of that colonel, in allusion to the Paschal lamb they bore on their flag; or the story of Tom Boilman, so nicknamed from having been compelled by those veterans to seethe the remains of his quartered friends in melted pitch. Women, for such idle words as It remains to add a few words respecting the From these remarks must be excepted the writings of Milton, which are nowhere stained by such a blemish. And yet posterity will perhaps with truth assert that Paradise Lost has wrought more intellectual evil than even its base contemporaries, since it has familiarized educated minds with images which, though in one sense sublime, in another are most unworthy, and has taught the public a dreadful materialization of the great and invisible God. A Manichean composition in reality, it was mistaken for a Christian poem. The progress of English literature not only offers striking proofs of the manner in which it was affected by theatrical representations, but also furnishes an interesting illustration of that It is difficult for us, who necessary course through which intellectual development must pass. live in a reading community, to comprehend the | to these plays; even the Passion, Resurrection, influence once exercised by the pulpit and the and Ascension were represented. Over illiterstage in the instruction of a non-reading people. ate minds a coarse but congenial influence was As late as the sixteenth century they were the obtained; a recollection, though not an underonly means of mental access to the public, and standing of sacred things. In the play of "the we should find, if we were to enter on a detailed Fall of Lucifer" that personage was introduced, examination of either one or the other, that they according to the vulgar acceptation, with horns, furnish a vivid reflection of the popular intellect- and tail, and cloven hoof; his beard, however, ual condition. Leaving to others such interest- was red, our forefathers having apparently ining researches into the comparative anatomy of dulged in a singular antipathy against hair of the English pulpit, I may, for a moment, direct that color. There still remain accounts of the attention to theatrical exhibitions. expenses incurred on some of these occasions, the coarse quaintness of which is not only amusing, but also shows the debased ideas of the times. For instance, in "Mysteries," enacted at Coventry, are such entries as "paid for a pair of gloves for God;" "paid for gilding God's coat;" "dyvers necessaries for the trimmynge of the Father of Heaven." In the play of the " Shepherds" there is provision for green cheese and Halton ale, a suitable recruitment after their long journey to the birth-place of our Saviour. "Payd to the players for rehearsal : imprimis, to God, iis. viiid.; to Pilate his wife, iis.; item, for keeping fyer at hell's mouth, iiid." A strict attention to chronology is not exacted; Herod swears by Mohammed, and promises one of his councilors to make him pope. Noah's wife, who, it appears, was a termagant, swears by the Virgin Mary that she will not go into the ark, and, indeed, is only constrained so to do by a sound cudgeling administered by the patriarch, the rustic justice of the audience being particularly directed to the point that such a flogging should not be given with a stick thicker than her husband's thumb. The sentiment of modesty seems not to have been very exacting, since in the play of "the Fall of Man" Adam and Eve appear entirely naked; one of the chief incidents is the adjustment of the fig-leaves. Many such circumstances might be related, impressing us perhaps with an idea of the obscenity and profanity of the times. But this would scarcely be a just conclusion. As the social state improved, we begin to find objections raised by the more thoughtful ecclesiastics, who refused to lend the holy vestments for such purposes, and at last succeeded in excluding these exhibitions from consecrated places. After dwindling down by degrees, these plays lingered in the booths at fairs or on market-days, the Church having resigned them to the guilds of different trades, and these, in the end, giving them up to the mountebank. And so they died. Their history is the outward and visible sign of a popular intellectual condition in process of passing away. There are three obvious phases through which the drama has passed, corresponding to as many phases in the process of intellectual development. These are respectively the miracle play, corresponding to the stage of childhood; the moral, corresponding to that of youth; the real, corresponding to that of manhood. In them respectively the supernatural, the theological, the positive predominates. The first went out of fashion soon after the middle of the fifteenth century, the second continued for about one hundred and fifty years, the third still remains. By the miracle play is understood a representation of Scripture incidents, enacted, however, without any regard to the probabilities of time, place, or action; such subjects as the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge, being considered as suitable, and in these scenes, without any concern for chronology, other personages, as the Pope or Mohammed, being introduced, or the Virgin Mary wearing a French hood, or Virgil worshiping the Saviour. Our forefathers were not at all critical historians; they indulged without stint in a highly pleasing credulity. They found no difficulty in admitting that Mohammed was originally a cardinal, who turned heretic out of spite because he was not elected pope; that, since the taking of the true cross by the Turks, all Christian children have twentytwo instead of thirty-two teeth, as was the case before that event; and that men have one rib less than women, answering to that taken from Adam. The moral play personifies virtues, vices, passions, goodness, courage, honesty, love. The real play introduces human actors, with a plot free from the supernatural, and probability is outraged as little as possible. Its excellency consists in the perfect manner in which it delineates human character and action. The miracle play was originally introduced by the Church, the first dramas of the kind, it is said, having been composed by Gregory Nazianzen. They were brought from Constantinople by the Crusaders; the Byzantines were always infatuated with theatrical shows. The parts of these plays were often enacted by ecclesiastics, The mystery and miracle plays were succeedand not unfrequently the representations took ed by the moral play. It has been thought by place at the abbey gate. So highly did the some, who have studied the history of the EnItalian authorities prize the influence of these glish theatre, that these plays were the result exhibitions on the vulgar, that the pope granted of the Reformation, with the activity of which a thousand days of pardon to any person who movement their popularity was coincident. But should submit to the pleasant penance of attend- perhaps the reader who is impressed with the ing them, All the arguments that had been principle of that definite order of social advanceused in behalf of picture-worship were applicablement so frequently referred to in this book will VOL. XXVII.-No. 158.-R agree with me that this relation of cause and effect can hardly be sustained, and that devotional exercises and popular recreations are in common affected by antecedent conditions. Of the moral play, a very characteristic example still remains under the title of "Everyman." It often delineates personification and allegory with very considerable power. This short phase of our theatrical career deserves a far closer attention than it has hitherto obtained, for it has left an indelible impression on our literature. I think that it is to this, in its declining days, that we are indebted for much of the machinery of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Whoever will compare that work with such plays as "Everyman" and "Lusty Juventus" can not fail to be struck with their resemblances. Such personages as "Good Counsel," "Abominable Living," "Hypocrasie," in the play are of the same family as those in the Progress. The stout Protestantism of both is at once edifying and amusing. An utter contempt for "holy stocks and holy stones, holy clouts and holy bones," as the play has it, animates them all. And it can hardly be doubted that the immortal tinker, in the carnal days when he played at tipcat and romped with the girls on the village green at Elstow, indulged himself in the edification of witnessing these dramatic representations. Such was the state of the literature of amusement; as to political literature, even at the close of the period we are considering, it could not be expected to flourish after the judges had declared that no man could publish political news except he had been duly authorized by the crown. Newspapers were, however, beginning to be periodically issued, and, if occasion called for it, broadsides, as they were termed, were added. In addition, newsletters were written by enterprising individuals in the metropolis, and sent to rich persons who subscribed for them; they then circulated from family to family, and doubtless enjoyed a privilege which has not descended to their printed contemporary, the newspaper, of never becoming stale. Their authors compiled them from materials picked up in the gossip of the coffee-houses. The coffee-houses, in a nonreading community, were quite an important political as well as social institution. They were of every kind, prelatical, popish, Puritan, scientific, literary, Whig, Tory. Whatever a man's notions might be, he could find in London, in a double sense, a coffee-house to his taste. In towns of considerable importance the literary demand was insignificant; thus it is said that the father of Dr. Johnson, the lexicographer, peddled books from town to town, and was accustomed to open a stall in Birmingham on market-days, and it is added that this supply of literature was equal to the demand. The liberty of the press has been of slow growth. Scarcely had printing been invented when it was found necessary every where to place it under some restraint, as was, for instance, done by Rome in her Index Expurga As to the passage from this dramatic phase to the real, in which the character and actions of man are portrayed, to the exclusion of the supernatural, it is only necessary to allude with brevity-indeed, it is only necessary to recall one name, and that one name is Shakspeare. He stands, in his relations to English literature, in the same position that the great Greek sculptorius of prohibited books, and the putting of tors stood with respect to ancient art, embodying conceptions of humanity in its various attributes with indescribable skill, and with an exquisite agreement to naturc. Not without significance is it that we find mystery in the pulpit and mystery on the stage. They appertain to social infancy. Such dramas as those I have alluded to, and many others that, if space had permitted, might have been quoted, were in unison with the times. The abbeys were boasting of such treasures as the French hood of the Virgin, "her smocke or shifte," the manger in which Christ was laid, the spear which pierced his side, the crown of thorns. The transition from this to the following stage is not without its political attendants, the prohibition of interludes containing any thing against the Church of Rome, the royal proclamation against preaching out of one's own brain, the appearance of the Puritan upon the national stage, an increasing acerbity of habit and sanctimoniousness of demeanor. printers who had offended under the ban; the action of the University of Paris, previously alluded to, was essentially of the same kind. In England, at first, the press was subjected to the common law; the crown judges themselves determined the offense, and could punish the offender with fine, imprisonment, or even death. Within the last century this power of determination has been taken from them, and a jury must decide, not only on the fact, but also on the character of the publication, whether libelous, seditious, or otherwise offensive. The press thus came to be a reflector of public opinion, casting light back upon the public; yet, as with other reflectors, a portion of the illuminating power is lost. The restraints under which it is laid are due, not so much to the fear that liberty would degenerate into license, for public opinion would soon correct that; they are rather connected with the necessities of the social state. Whoever will examine the condition of EnWith peculiar facility we may therefore, gland at successive periods during her passage through an examination of the state of the through the Age of Faith will see how slow was drama, determine national mental condition. her progress, and will, perhaps, be surprised to The same may be done by a like examination find at its close how small was her advance. of the state of the pulpit. Whoever will take the The ideas that had served her for so many centrouble to compare the results together can not turies as a guide had rather obstructed than fafail to observe how remarkably they correspond.cilitated her way. But whoever will consider trast. "No, Millard-you don't understand"—but Millard had already left the room, and Mark, with a nervous little laugh, remained drumming upon the table with his fingers until the return of his brother, who spread before him an engraving representing an oblong black stone upon whose surface were represented a series of char what she has done since she fairly entered on her Age of Reason will remark a wonderful conThere has not been a progress in physical conditions only-a securing of better food, better clothing, better shelter, swifter locomotion, the procurement of individual happiness, an extension of the term of life. There has been a great moral advancement. Such atroc-acters in three separate groups, differing indeed ities as those mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs are now impossible, and so unlike our own manners that doubtless we read of them at first with incredulity, and with difficulty are brought to believe that these are the things our ancestors did. What a difference between the dilatoriness of the past, its objectless exertions, its unsatisfactory end, and the energy, the welldirected intentions of the present age, which have already yielded results like the prodigies of romance! THE ROSETTA STONE. T is not at all likely that her mother ever in their nature, but all equally vague and meaningless to the bewildered eyes of Mark Vane, who, nevertheless, bent low his head in pretended scrutiny. "It's accurate, you may depend on that, Mark. I took it to the Museum, and with a strong magnifying glass went over the whole inscription letter by letter, line by line, figure by figure. It's as good for all practical purposes as the Stone itself." "It's very curious, I dare say; but here's a sketch of the Rosetta Stone, which I prefer to yours, with its mysterious inscriptions," replied Mark, handing to his brother a drawing. 'Why, Mark, this is the portrait of a wo Iar cared for it if she man!" had, or that she had the least idea that she was stamping her child's destiny in naming her by its name; but she did, and so gave rise to a peculiar little conversation between Mark and Millard Vane, the while they sat at breakfast in the comfortable, bachelor establishment of the former, and reunited the bonds of brotherly love somewhat strained by a ten years' absence of the latter in the realms that lie beneath our feet. "And now I suppose you feel as if you had seen every thing that is worth seeing on this ridiculous little globe of ours," said Mark, fold- | ing his napkin with sedulous care, and yet with a slight trepidation of manner. "Hum-well, I don't know. Do you wish me to quote Ulysses to the effect that I have traveled observant through foreign climes, and taught me other tongues; have seen men and things innumerable, but yet-" "Have not seen Rosetta Stone," interposed Mark, with a laugh that was evidently forced. "The Rosetta Stone, my dear boy!" exclaimed Millard, coming briskly back from the little reminiscent reverie toward which he had been tending, and looking at his brother with considerable surprise--"The Rosetta Stone has been for the last year my chief object of interest. The reason I remained in England instead of coming home last spring was to have a few months more study of it." "You could have studied to more advantage here," interrupted Mark, once more, with a sheepish smile. "Nonsense, Mark. Excuse me, old fellow, but how could I study the Rosetta Stone any where so well as at the British Museum? There are engravings, to be sure, and very accurate pictures." "I wish I had one," muttered Mark. "Do you, though? I'm very happy to hear you say so, for I took great pains to secure one of the finest. I'll get it for you." "That is plain enough; but it's my Rosetta Stone for all that." "Oh, her name is Rosetta Stone, is it?" "At present, yes; but I hope it will soon be changed to Rosetta Vane." "I congratulate you, Mark. But who is the lady?" "You remember old Jacob Stone?" "What, you don't mean that crabbed, vulgar old man, who swore that we robbed his peartree, and got us a most unmerited flogging? You don't mean-" "I remember," interposed Mark, laughing. "If we didn't deserve the flogging for robbing the pear-tree, we richly earned it by our subsequent annoyances of the old fellow, so we may fairly cry quits. But Jacob is dead.” "And this Rosetta-?" "Is the daughter of David Stone, only son of our old enemy. Don't you remember hearing that he had a son at the West?" "Yes." "Well, last year, just after old Jacob's death, his widow sent for me to come and see her. I went, and found her in much perplexity over a letter written by some Wisconsin doctor to inform her that her son and his wife were both dead and had left an only child, who was to be sent East as soon as the necessary funds were forwarded." "Why should the old woman send for you?" "Because in this part of the country we who have money consider it an acknowledged duty to help our poorer neighbors." "And so you—” "Wrote the letter-inclosed the money." "I see," replied the elder, dryly, as, plunging his hands deep into his trowsers pockets, he walked to the window and looked vacantly across the Hudson, sparkling in the mellow sunlight. "Well?" demanded he at last, wheeling sud |