Victory into a corner, and, having utterly defeated him, was endeavouring to strangle him with his own wreath. Religion was cursing and swearing like a trooper at Mercy, who, having got him down to the ground, was pummelling him with a most truculent and blood-thirsty rage. Hope was seen utterly reduced to despair by Justice, who was belabouring him in a blind fury with his wooden sword. Charity, holding a bottle of sack to his mouth, was refusing a single drop of it to Faith, in spite of the most earnest supplications. Temperance, with a black eye, was lying sprawling in one corner of the stage, in a most pitiable plight of drunkenness; and Fortitude was sitting in another, crying and snivelling because Peace had given him a bloody nose.

At first, the spectators were lost in an utter amazement, staring in bewilderment at the scene before them, and waiting impatiently till the hidden meaning should develope itself. Accustomed to masqueradings, pranks, gambols,

and every species of farcical buffoonery, they took it for granted that the representation was part of the regular entertainment, allegorical, perhaps, of chaos and war, out of which were ultimately to spring peace and order, and all the golden virtues of Saturn and Astræa. Of such a desirable consummation, however, there was not the least appearance. War raged with redoubled fury; the actions, language, and attitudes of the belligerents sufficiently testified that they were not only angry in earnest, but most indisputably tipsy. The trick that had been played them was quickly buzzed about: they who were not in the secret began to guess at the truth; the real state of the case seemed to flash upon the whole assembly at once; and a simultaneous, universal roar of boisterous laughter made the vaulted and venerable roof of Christchurch-hall re-echo to its peal.

To the polished Court of Charles the Second, as it has been sometimes, though most erroneous

ly, denominated, there was nothing revolting in the grossness and irregularity of the scene before them. By no means squeamish themselves, and still less fastidious about others, they found food for an egregious and ungovernable mirth in the profane oaths, ribald language, disfigured features, drunken looks, and indecorous gestures of the actors, all of whom seemed to forget that they represented females, and were attired in petticoats. Their first fury of intoxication and anger was now subsiding; and as they gradually became sensible, in their returning soberness, that they had been guilty of a most enormous disrespect to Majesty, they gazed at the august company, whom they had thus outraged, with vacant, sheepish, and lacka-daisical looks, that seemed equally compounded of drunkenness and dismay; but which only aggravated into a shriek the laughter of the spectators.

Rochester, who never wished a jest to drop, and never felt the least compunction towards

its victims, heightened their terrors to the utmost by again mingling among the actors; informing them that the King was in wrathful dudgeon, and playing upon their still-bewildered faculties until he persuaded them that they had been guilty of petty treason and LezeMajesté. Finding them in a fit mood for his purpose, he led them all up in penitent plight to the royal chair, and asked the King whether it was his Majesty's pleasure to pronounce sentence of death upon the culprits?

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My Lord of Rochester, well knowing your fitness for the office, we constitute you our Judge and Representative," replied Charles, who enjoyed the scene, though he did not wish to be at the trouble of supporting a character in it.

"Aha!" exclaimed Rochester pompously, at the same time puffing out his cheeks, pulling out the curls of his perriwig in order to look as judicial as possible, and sinking slowly and magisterially into a chair; while Killi

grew seated himself upon the ground before him, and, taking a pencil and paper from his pocket, assumed the sober look of a magistrate's clerk.

Speaking in a loud, solemn, and dictatorial tone, the mock Judge then exclaimed: "Come into Court, ye rascally Virtues, foul-mouthed Purities, and worthless Excellencies! how will ye be tried, humanly or allegorically, in your persons or personifications; as ye ought to be, and are not; or as ye are, and ought not to be ?"

The puzzled and penitent looks of the delinquents declared, without speaking, that the question was beyond their comprehension; and a dead silence ensued, until Temperance, hiccoughing, tottering on his knees, and fixing his drunken eyes upon Rochester with a stolid stare, mumbled out :" I'll take my oath, my lord, I'm at this moment as sober as a Judge." "As your present Judge you may be," cried Charles.

"'Ods fish! my friend, subpoena

the King, and he shall swear to it.”