g bonfires reddening the wild November hills, must
have been looked forward to with no slight degree of pleasure. For one
night, at least, the cramped and smothered fun and mischief of the
younger generation were permitted to revel in the wild extravagance
of a Roman saturnalia or the Christmas holidays of a slave plantation.
Bigotry--frowning upon the May-pole, with its flower wreaths and sportive
revellers, and counting the steps of the dancers as so many steps towards
perdition--recognized in the grim farce of Guy Fawkes's anniversary
something of its own lineaments, smiled complacently upon the riotous
young actors, and opened its close purse to furnish tar-barrels to roast
the Pope, and strong water to moisten the throats of his noisy judges and
executioners.

Up to the time of the Revolution the powder plot was duly commemorated
throughout New England. At that period the celebration of it was
discountenanced, and in many places prohibited, on the ground that it was
insulting to our Catholic allies from France. In Coffin's History of
Newbury it is stated that, in 1774, the town authorities of Newburyport
ordered "that no effigies be carried about or exhibited only in the
daytime." The last public celebration in that town was in the following
year. Long before the close of the last century the exhibitions of Pope
Night had entirely ceased throughout the country, with, as far as we can
learn, a solitary exception. The stranger who chances to be travelling
on the road between Newburyport and Haverhill, on the night of the 5th of
November, may well fancy that an invasion is threatened from the sea, or
that an insurrection is going on inland; for from all the high hills
overlooking the river tall fires are seen blazing redly against the cold,
dark, autumnal sky, surrounded by groups of young men and boys busily
engaged in urging them with fresh fuel into intenser activity. To feed
these bonfires, everything combustible which could be begged or stolen
from the neighboring villages, farm-houses, and fences is put in
requisition. Old tar-tubs, purloined from the shipbuilders of the
river-side, and flour and lard barrels from the village-traders, are
stored away for days, and perhaps weeks, in the woods or in the rain-
gullies of the hills, in preparation for Pope Night. From the earliest
settlement of the towns of Amesbury and Salisbury, the night of the
powder plot has been thus celebrated, with unbroken regularit