contrary to religion and good manners? Well, I really do not know; but I do know that, in the very year of the decree, she herself had the comedy of 'Sir Solomon' acted before her and her ladies at court; and if she could listen to that without a blush, or a mask to conceal the want of it, why she must have construed immorality, and her royal command against it, in a very mild sense indeed.

The ladies were uncommonly angry with their liege mistress Anne for this decree, and the sentiment is exemplified by the song so popular at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre in 1704,—' The Misses' Lamentation, for want of their Vizard Masques at the Theatre.' The "misses" however, and the matrons too, had long before this indulged in a fashion which was not dropped until long subsequent to the fall of the mask.

About five years after Mrs. Pepys had taken Samuel for her liege lord, that is to say in 1660, she first essayed to add new lustre to her charms by affixing a few "beauty spots" to her face. "This is the first day," says he, on the 30th of August of the year above named, "that ever I saw my wife wear black patches since we were married." It was some time before the gentleman could make up his mind to the propriety of wearing these adjuncts to beauty. In October, he expresses his astonishment that even Lord Sandwich should "talk very high how he would have a French cook, and a master of his horse, and his lady and child to wear black patches; which methought was strange, but he has become a perfect courtier.” It was perhaps because the court patronized patches, that Pepys permitted them on his wife. Hitherto the lady had worn them without the marital sanction, but in November we find him saying, "My wife seemed very pretty today, it being the first time I had given her leave to weare a black patch." And therewith his admiration increased; and some days later, on seeing his wife close to the Princess Henrietta (daughter

of Charles I.) at court, on the occasion of a visit she paid to her brother Charles II., as Duchess of Orléans, he remarks: "The Princess Henrietta is very pretty; but

my wife standing near her, with two or three black patches on, and well-dressed, did seem to me much handsomer than she."

A century subsequent to this, patches still kissed the cheek of beauty; and as professors taught how to wield the fan, so French essays were done into English," and instruction therein given as to the secret of applying them in an artful manner, how to arrange them with the most killing effect, and how to so plant them about the eye that the expression desired should be at once achieved,-whether of proud disdain, amorous languor, or significant boldness. They were the hieroglyphics of vanity and of party spirit; and beaux and politicians read in the arrangement of patches not only the tender but the political principles of the wearer.

Despotism too had something to do with patches. Thus Lady Castlemaine fixed the fashion of mourning, by "forcing all the ladies to go in black, with their hair plain, and without spots." It is a curious trait of the manners of other times that a royal concubine should order the tiring of honest women. She could hardly have influenced that " "comely woman," the Duchess of Newcastle, who went about, in the second Charles's time, with a velvet cap, her hair about her ears, "many black patches, because of pimples about her mouth," naked-necked, and in a black justaucorps.

The ladies marked or patched, the gentlemen red-heeled and similarly "nosed," had no greater delight than in killing time by looking at the "puppets ;" and the fashion of these same puppets is a thing of such antiquity and such duration, that I may fairly add a chapter thereon to those through which I have already been accompanied by the courteous and indulgent reader.

PUPPETS FOR GROWN GENTLEMEN.

"They do lie in a basket, Sir; they are o' the small players,—and as good as any, none dispraised, for dumb shows."-BEN JONSON: Bartholomew Fair.

MADAME DE PUYSIEUX was a witty and vivacious lady. Among her recorded sayings is one that exceedingly well suits me for the nonce. "I would rather," she said, "be occasionally found looking at puppets than listening to philosophers."

There was doubtless some reason in this; but the fact is also indubitable, that puppets and philosophy are not so far apart. The latter has often condescended to illustrate the former. The learned and serious Jesuit, Mariantonio Lupi, devoted his brief leisure to writing upon them. The great mathematicians, Commendino d' Urbino and Torniano di Cremona, stooped to play with and perfect them. Le Sage and Piron wrote plays for them. Ben Jonson brought them on the stage. Addison has immortalized them in stately verse; and Haydn seriously addressed himself to composing exquisite music, wherewith to grace their motion. These are but modern illustrations. We shall however presently discover, that the great and gifted men of a very remote antiquity were wont also to turn from the consideration of mighty problems, and carve puppets that should excite ecstasy in the wide world of "the little people."

Surely there is dignity in a subject treating even of toys that have been in fashion for three thousand years, and

have afforded amusement to two-thirds of the human race. The subject was largely discussed in France not many years since, by M. Charles Magnin, a gentleman who, in love with his plaything, had recourse to every source of information, and who brought away from all something worth knowing. M. Magnin shows that the gravest of authors are at issue as to the origin of the puppet race. Charles Nodier, however, traces it to the doll that lies in unconscious felicity in the arms of youthful and precocious maturity. M. Magnin maintains, on the other hand, that the puppet does not spring from the hearth, but from the altar. The rude god whittled out of a gnarled bough is, with doubted sire of the universe of dolls.

him, the unThe puppet served

for pious, before it was suited to domestic, purposes; and it excited awe long before it won laughter or excited admiration. It lived in a wood, and ruled savages. As civilization advanced, it changed its habits, form, and features; and, ceasing to affright man, undertook the happier task of amusing him.

Such is the legendary record of puppets. We must turn over the graphic pages of the 'Father of History,' to find the first authentic mention of their employment. The guests at an Egyptian feast, when they grew hilarious, were called back to sober propriety by the exhibition of a little skeleton, and the admonition to reflect upon the lesson it conveyed. The British Museum possesses many of these figures, as well as others which appear to be toys that have been buried with their loved little owners. There is some uncertainty on this point, however; for it is known that on diseased persons it was the custom to place little figures, supposed to represent the deity which had particular influence over the part whereon the image was laid. I believe that the liver was the only portion of the body that had not its peculiar divinity. That obstinate organ has always defied gods and men. "In jecore nigro nascuntur

domini ;" and over these even the Egyptian Pantheon availed nothing.

Whether the figures in our Museum be actual toys, or counterfeit presentments of very swarthy gods, it is not in every instance easy to determine. From conjecture however we can turn to Herodotus; and certainly that worthy Halicarnassian tells us, in his second book, that in Egypt, on the festival of Osiris, or Bacchus, a puppet figure of the joyous god, a cubit in height, with some indecent mechanism moved by the pulling of a string, was carried in procession by the women. When previously speaking of the figure of Pan, he says, that the deity in question is worshiped under a form known not to be his real one, for a reason, he adds, which he "had rather not mention." So, in the case of Bacchus, he confines himself to stating that there were

"sacred and mysterious reasons' " for the same. We are now aware that the unseemly practice was really a species of invocation that the earth might be impregnated with prolific virtue.

We next arrive at articulated figures. The statue of Jupiter Ammon nodded to the attendant priests when he was about to prophesy. So Apollo, at Heliopolis, would not open his lips till his ministers had carried him whither he would go. Aloft on the shoulders of his bearers, he guided them as with reins. On being questioned, he graciously bowed his head, if he approved; or fell back, if he dissented. When placed on the ground of his temple, he was seen to ascend, without aid, till his head touched the roof; and there he remained fixed till prayers brought him down again. It is suggested that the magnet may have been employed to accomplish the feat. How this may have been defies aught but conjecture.

Voluntary motion of inanimate objects was always an evidence of their divinity. When Juno paid her celebrated visit to Vulcan, she found him engaged in the ma