XIII. Lenten and other Church fasts savoured of superstition in the esteem of the Puritans; but, by the latter, seasons of national humiliation were as solemnly observed as they were frequently enjoined. The Directory defined a fast as requiring total abstinence, not only from food, but also from worldly labour, discourses, and thoughts, and from all bodily delights and rich apparel; still much more from what is scandalous and offensive, such as "gaudish attire, lascivious habits and gestures, and other vanities of either sex;" but abstinence in the last particulars certainly was not meant to be represented as peculiar to days of public repentance. Much time on these occasions was ordered to be spent in reading, hearing, and singing in such manner so "as to quicken suitable affections, especially in prayer;" for which latter exercise the Assembly of Divines had been careful--as in reference to all other kinds of worship--to provide appropriate subjects. Nor were themes proper for the pulpit at such seasons, left unmentioned by those spiritual counsellors. Similar directions, the difference of the object being taken into account, were also given for public thanksgivings. And, not only when governments ordered fasts for the sins of the people, or festivals for victories and deliverances, but at other times, on account both of private sorrows and private joys, did Puritan households devote whole days to the worship of God. Scattered up and down the quaint biographies of that era are instances of hours spent in solitary devotion; of lengthened preparations for the sacrament; of family groups gathered upon their knees, bewailing lukewarmness, declension and backsliding; of services at home akin to those at church, bewailing the low estate of Christendom; of sorrowful commemorations of public and domestic calamities, and of intense spiritual enjoyments experienced alone in the closet, or shared by all the inmates of a dwelling; whilst texts and psalms, religious anecdotes and pious meditations, set their mark on the anniversaries of births, marriages, and special interventions of providence. [Sidenote: _Recreations._] XIV. Certain recreations were rigorously forbidden. No wonder the theatre incurred denunciation, after the character given of it by Ben Jonson. Parliament prohibited stage exhibitions; but, in despite of the law, they were covertly continued in certain private mansions, much to the annoyance of the Puritan class. A company of actors in Golding Lane were frequently complained of, who, notwithstanding all complaints, still persevered in their forbidden art; but they were at length seized in the middle of a performance, when, as it was remarked, comedy was turned into tragedy. They were put under a strong guard of pikes and muskets, "plundered of all the richest of their clothes," and left "nothing but necessaries, now"--adds the newspaper which reports the occurrence--"to act and to learn a better life."[432]