him down,
Free from care and from disaster,
To assume a heavenly crown."

As she concludes her lay, she places the May-pole in the centre of the
stage, and a happy throng of gay young swains and damsels enter and
commence the main dance around it. The Puritan watches them at first
with a wild gaze, in which horror is mingled with something of
admiration. Gradually his stern features relax into a grim smile, and at
last, unable longer to restrain his feelings, he bursts forth in a most
immoderate and carnal laugh. His feet at first keep time to the gay
music; he then begins to shuffle them grotesquely on the floor, and
finally, overcome by the wild spirit of contagion, he unites in the
dance to the sound of the merry rebecks. While the dance continues, he
shakes off the straight-laced puritan dress which he had assumed, and
tossing the peaked hat high in the air, appears, amid the deafening
shouts of the delighted auditory, in the front of the stage in the rich
costume of the English court, and with a royal diadem upon his brow, the
mimic impersonation of Charles the Second.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] The intelligent reader, familiar with the Odyssey, need not to be
reminded that with this wand of Moly, which Mercury presented to
Ulysses, the Grecian hero was enabled to restore his unhappy companions,
who, by the magic of the goddess Circe, had been transformed into swine.

[30] A true copy from the records.

[31] "Cromwell," says an old writer, "hath beat up his drums clean
through the Old Testament. You may learn the genealogy of our Saviour by
the names of his regiment. The muster-master has no other list than the
first chapter of St. Matthew." If the Puritan sergeant had lost this
roll, Nehemiah XII. would serve him instead.

[32] The actual name of one of the Puritans.

[33] General Monk, the restorer of royalty.

[34] The Puritans believed the period of the revolution to be the latter
days spoken of in prophecy.

CHAPTER XVI.

"I charge you, oh women! for the love you bear to men, to like as
much of this play as please you; and I charge you, oh men! for the
love you bear to women, (as I perceive by your simpering, none of
you hate them,) that between you and the women the play may
please."
_As you Like It._

"There is the devil haunts thee, in the likeness of a fat old man;
a tun of man is thy companion.