_The Commonwealth and the Fair._—1649. This was a year of political commotion. The troubles with the King had terminated on the block. There was issued in the form of a tract, a book-play entitled: “A Bartholomew Fairing, New, New, New; Sent from the raised siege before Dublin, as a preparatory Present to the Great Thanksgiving Day. To be communicated onely to Independents.” It was published without any printer’s name. Its contents throw some light upon the political events of the period; but these have no bearing upon the fair, present or future. It seems indeed to have been anticipated that the advent of the Puritans into power in this the first year of the Commonwealth might have led to the suppression of the fair. The speech of Zealot-of-the-land Busy, while sitting in the stocks at the fair in 1614 (“Bartholomew Fair,” by Ben Jonson) seemed prophetically to hint at this. Mr. Morley gives the following instructive picture of the period: The Puritans did not suppress Bartholomew Fair. There were indeed no dramas performed in it by living actors, but the state did not condescend, like Rabbi Busy, to engage in controversy with the puppets. It was for the Corporation of London, if it pleased, to exercise control, and there was a Lord Mayor, who, as we shall see, did make himself eminent for an attack upon the wooden Dagons of the Show. Against the fool in his motley none made war; Cromwell himself had in his private service four buffoons, and had he visited the fair, true hero as he was, might have been well disposed to mount a hobby-horse. Therefore the clown still jested, and the toyman thrust his baubles in the face of the Roundhead, while the Cavalier’s lady, with a constellation of black stars about her nose, a moon of ink on her chin, and a coach and horses—a very fashionable patch—on her forehead, laughed at the short hair under the broad-brimmed hat of the offended gentleman. Well might she laugh at the miserable scarecrow in plain cloak and jerkin, and in boots that fitted him: for he had no love locks and no peaked beard like the gallant at her side; he wore only a little pecked band instead of a laced collar, and as for his breeches—not only did they want ornament and width; but they even showed no elegant bit of shirt protruding over them! Across the Smithfield pavement, Cavaliers in boots two inches too long, and with laced tops wide enough to contain each of them a goose, straddled about; compelled to straddle in order that the long and jingling spur of one boot, hooked into the ruffle of the other, might not bring down the whole man into the gutter. Women I say might note such things, but the men were in earnest. The dainty Cavalier in the historical shirt, embroidered with the deeds of profane heroes, might glance from the speckled face of his companion towards the clean cheeks of the Puritan maid in the religious petticoat worked over with texts and scripture scenes; all had their