artless mirth so easily excited in a good-humoured child, the naivete of its odd questions and ignorant wonder, which delight us while associated with innocence and simplicity, would provoke the utmost disgust if we met with them where we look for intelligence and decorous observances. The simplicity of primitive manners, in what regards the petty amusements and minute attentions to which we have become accustomed, is exactly tantamount to that of childhood; it is a thing which, in our state of society, we have no idea of. Those who are, from their depressed situation, ignorant of the forms of polished life, know, at least, that such exist; and either awkwardly imitate them, or carefully avoid committing themselves, by betraying their ignorance. Here, while this simplicity, which, by the by, was no more vulgar than that of Shakspeare’s Miranda, with its concomitant purity, continued unbroken by foreign modes, it had all the charm of undesigning childhood; but when half education and ill supported pretensions took place of this sweet attraction, it assumed a very different aspect; it was no longer simplicity but vulgarity. There are things that every one feels and no one can describe, and this is one of them. But to return to our Mirandas and their theatrical heroes: the fame of their exhibitions went abroad, and opinions were formed of them no way favourable to the actors or to the audience. In this region of reality, where rigid truth was always undisguised, they had not learned to distinguish between fiction and falsehood. It was said that the officers, familiar with every vice and every disguise, had not only spent a whole night in telling lies in a counterfeited place, the reality of which had never existed, but that they were themselves a lie, and had degraded manhood, and broke through an express prohibition in Scripture, by assuming female habits; that they had not only told lies, but cursed and swore the whole night; and assumed the characters of knaves, fools, and robbers, which every wise and good man held in detestation, and no one would put on unless they felt themselves easy in them. Painting their faces, of all other things, seemed most to violate the Albanian ideas of decorum, and was looked upon as a most flagrant abomination. Great and loud was the outcry produced by it. Little skilled in sophistry, and strangers to all the arts “that make the worst appear the better reason,” the young auditors could only say, “that indeed it was very amusing; made them laugh heartily, and did harm to nobody.” So harmless, indeed, and agreeable did this entertainment appear to the new converts to fashion, that the Recruiting Officer was given out for another night, to the great annoyance of Domine Freylinghausen, who invoked heaven and earth to witness and avenge this contempt, not only of his authority, but, as he expressed it, of the source from whence it was derived. Such had been the sanctity of this