After all, Justice was here, as usual, uncommonly blind; for the boxing party, masked or not, was not more offensive against _bonos mores_ than the Ranelagh parties, where powdered “bloods” percolated their dreadfully luscious nonsense through the filter on the faces of the masked “belles.” And besides, masking at holiday-time had long been a privilege of the people. In ‘Vox Graculi’ (1623), above a century prior to the last date, I find it stated of Twelfth Night—“On this night, much masking in the Strand, Cheapside, Holborn, and Fleet-street.” I have already noticed how our exceedingly precious grandmothers used to resort to the theatres with covered faces instead of stopped-up ears. The ears of the public did however rise angrily at last; the palled appetite loathed the long-served food. A society was formed “for the reformation of manners, for immoral words and expressions _contra bonos mores_, uttered on the stage.” The society retained hired informers, who sat in the pit, took down the naughty words and the names of the speakers, and then entered a prosecution against the utterers. They were driving a pretty trade, for the benefit of modesty and the suppression of masks, when all at once Queen Anne, sipping her hollands, gently bethought herself that these spies were flourishing by the abundance of that which they feigned desire to put down; and indeed the fellows were like some of our professional missionaries of the _pavé_, who steal spoons from chop-houses, and have as many wives as Rugantino. The Queen accordingly crushed the trading prosecutions by a “Nolle prosequi,” and took the matter into her own hands. She issued a “royal command” for the better regulation of the theatres, whereby she left to her Master of the Revels “the special care that nothing be acted in either of the theatres contrary to religion or good manners, upon pain of our high displeasure, and of being silenced from further acting.” Now, leaving to a Master of the Revels the care of suppressing revelry on the stage, was very much like entrusting to Satan the suppression of sin. However, so it was; but her Majesty tore the masks off herself, or rather threatened to do so, as thus:— “We do hereby strictly command that no person, of what quality soever, presume to go behind the scenes, or come upon the stage, either before or during the acting of any piece; that no woman be allowed or presume to wear a vizard mask in either of the theatres; and that no persons come into either house without paying the price established for their respective places.”