home, and very ready to listen to the advances of the gay gallants from the court end of the town, or from the tavern. The city tradesman has generally an apprentice or two, sometimes very sober but perhaps more frequently dissipated, who play their parts in the piece; and often a daughter, who is either a model of modesty and all the domestic virtues, and is finally the reward of some hero of good principles, who has been temporarily led astray, and his character misinterpreted, or who is gay and intriguing, and comes to disgrace. But the favourite idea of excellence, or, to use a technical phrase, the _beau ideal_ of this comedy, appears to have been a wild youth, who goes through every scene of dissipation, in a gentlemanly manner (as the term was then understood), and comes out at the end of the play as an honest, virtuous man, and receives the reward for qualities which he had not previously displayed. Sometimes the writers of this comedy indulged in personal, or even in political, allusions which brought them into trouble. In the year 1605, Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston, wrote jointly a comedy entitled "Eastward Hoe." It is a very excellent and amusing comedy, and was very popular. Touchstone, an honest goldsmith in the city, has two apprentices, Golding, a sober and industrious youth, and Quicksilver, who is an irreclaimable rake. Touchstone has also two daughters, the eldest of whom, Gertrude, affects the fine lady, and is ambitious of finding a husband in the fashionable world, while her younger sister, Mildred, is all virtue and humility. An attachment arises between Golding and Mildred. Another character in this drama is a needy, scheming knight, who lives upon the town, and rejoices in the name of Sir Petronel Flash. Sir Petronel is attracted by the rich dowry which the young lady, Gertrude, had to expect, pays his court to her, and easily works upon her vanity; and, her mother encouraging her, they are hastily married, contrary to the wishes of her father. The knight is supposed to possess a magnificent castle somewhere to the east of London, and the young bride and her mother proceed in search of this, from which the comedy derives its title of "Eastward Hoe," but they are involved in various disagreeable adventures in the search, which ends in the conviction that it is all a fable. Another character in the play is a greedy and unprincipled usurer, who is so jealous of his young and pretty wife, that he keeps her under lock and key; and this man is deeply involved in money-lending with Sir Petronel Flash, and they are engaged in a series of unprincipled transactions, which lead to the disgrace of them all, and in the course of which the virtue of the usurer's wife falls a sacrifice. Meanwhile the fortunes of the two apprentices have been advancing in directly opposite directions. Quicksilver, the unworthy apprentice, leaves his master, proceeds from bad to worse, and finally is committed to prison, for a crime