It was just at this time when a great inroad was attempted on the rigidity of the Puritan manners, by the attempt of some young Englishmen at Boston to introduce theatrical entertainments. The play first announced was Otway’s Orphan, but it proceeded no further than announcement, such exhibitions being at once prohibited, “as tending to discourage industry and frugality, and greatly to the increase of impiety and contempt for religion.” Connecticut immediately followed the example; neither would she suffer such Babylonish pursuits. Two years afterwards, a London company of actors came over, and acted the Beau’s Stratagem and Merchant of Venice, at Annapolis and Williamsburg in Virginia. Connecticut and Massachusetts being closed against them, they confined their labours to Annapolis, Williamsburg, Philadelphia, Perth-Amboy, New York and Newport. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle left the great causes of difference, the undefined limits of the French and English claims in America, still unsettled. The French, by virtue of the discoveries of La Salle, Marquette, Champlain and others, claimed all the lands occupied by the waters flowing into the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi and the Lakes, and all watered by the Mississippi and its branches. In fact, they claimed the whole of America, except that portion which lies east of the Allegany chain, the rivers of which flow into the Atlantic, and even of this they claimed the basin of the Kennebec and all Maine to the east of that valley. The British on the contrary, asserted a right to the entire country, on account of the discovery of Cabot, extending their claims under the old patents with more than equal extravagance, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. To strengthen this title, they had lately purchased from the chiefs of the confederated Six Nations, acknowledged by the treaties of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle as being under British protection, their claim to the country of the Mississippi, which, it was stated, had at some former period been conquered by them.