The death of James I. (for Jamie was much addicted to sports, and loved the Puritans, as the Puritans and Lucifer love holy water!) was “a heavy blow, and a great discouragement” to the nation's jollity: and the troubles and treasons of the succeeding unhappy reign indisposed men's hearts to merriment, and turned fair England into a howling wilderness. Bartholomew Fair in 1641 * exhibits a sorry shadow of its joyous predecessor--'Tis Fat Jack, mountain of mirth! dwindled into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon! Zeal-of-the-land Busy had become rampant; and Dame Ursula, if the old lady yet lived, was most probably a reformed sister, and purveyor of roast pig to the Rabbi at home! * “Bartholomew Faire; Or, Variety of fancies, where you may find A faire of wares, and all to please your mind. With the severall enormityes and misdemeanours which are there seene and acted. London: Printed for Richard Harper, at the Bible and Harpe, in Smithfield. 1641.” As a picture, it wants the vivid colouring of the former great painter. It seems to have been limned by a wet, or parcel puritan, a dead wall between pantile and puppet-show! Our first move is into Christ Church cloisters, “which are hung so full of pictures, that you would take that place, or rather mistake it, for St. Peter's in Rome. And now, being arrived through the long walke, to Saint Bartholomew's hospitall,” he draws a ludicrous picture of a “handsome wench” bartering her good name for “a moiety of bone-lace; a slight silver bodkin; a hoop-ring, or the like toye.” Proceeding into the heart of the fair, it becomes necessary that while one eye is watching the motion of the puppets, the other should look sharp to the pockets. “Here's a knave in a foole's coat, with a trumpet sounding, or on a drumme beating, invites you, and would faine persuade you to see his puppets; there is a rogue like a wild woodman, or in an antick-ship, like an incubus, desires your company to view his motion. On the other side, Hocus Pocus, with three yards of tape, or ribbon in's hand, shews his legerdemaine * to the admiration and astonishment of a company of cock-oloaches. * “Legerdemain is an art whereby one may seem to work wonderful, impossible, and incredible things, by agility, nimbleness, and slight of hand. “An adept must be one of an audacious spirit, w'ith a nimble conveyance, and a vocabulary of cabalistic phrases to astonish the beholder,--as Hey! Fortuna! Furia! Nunquam credo I Saturnus, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, &c. &c. “He must throw himself into such odd gestures as may divert the eyes of the spectators from a too strict observation of his manner of conveyance.”