cast reflections on other departments of the Government. This attempt to revive the license of the Attic stage was soon brought to a close by the appearance of a strong body of constables, who carried off the actors to prison.” Thus was suppressed an attempt, less to revive than to continue the license of the jester. Government had become less tolerant in this respect than Kings had been to their own fools. A dozen years before, an essay to joke down the administrative foibles of the day, by a pamphleteering jester, “Heraclitus Ridens,” was very summarily and stringently punished. Bartholomew fair, however, struggled hard to maintain its supposed privileges. It is very possible that if persons of high station employed the merry-andrews of 1693, to spout their fun against elevated Ministers of State, that they were also present to hear how their agents acquitted themselves of the office. Nothing was more common than the presence of the nobility at the Saturnalia in Smithfield, except the presence of the “mobile,” with whom the former frequently came in sanguinary contact. In September, 1690, Luttrell writes:--“The first instant was a great disorder at Bartholomew fair, where the mobile got ahead, and quarrelled with some gentlemen, upon which, swords were drawn, where some were wounded, and one or two killed.” Even as late as the reign of George II., the fair was patronized by an august presence. Frederick, Prince of Wales, used to go there by night, attended by a merry suit of courtiers of either sex. The theatres were then closed, and “their Majesties’ servants” played in booths. Princes now went to see the “drolls;” whereas, in former times the clowns waited on the princes. Before this last period, Queen Anne may be said to have had some of the old leaven in her; for she made a Knight of William Read, a mountebank. Her Majesty, also, offered to knight Beau Nash, a buffoon too, according to the fashion of the times; but the Beau had declined the honour at the hands of the great Nassau, and he would not take it from Anne. His reply was in the bad court-jester style: “I will have none of it, most gracious Madam,” said Nash, as if he were refusing to grant a favour; “but there is Sir William Read, the mountebank, whom your Majesty has knighted,--I shall be very happy to call him Brother.” At which fool’s sally, “the solemn Anna smiled.”