As she concludes her lay, she places the May-pole in the centre of the stage, and a happy throng of gay young swains and damsels enter and commence the main dance around it. The Puritan watches them at first with a wild gaze, in which horror is mingled with something of admiration. Gradually his stern features relax into a grim smile, and at last, unable longer to restrain his feelings, he bursts forth in a most immoderate and carnal laugh. His feet at first keep time to the gay music; he then begins to shuffle them grotesquely on the floor, and finally, overcome by the wild spirit of contagion, he unites in the dance to the sound of the merry rebecks. While the dance continues, he shakes off the straight-laced puritan dress which he had assumed, and tossing the peaked hat high in the air, appears, amid the deafening shouts of the delighted auditory, in the front of the stage in the rich costume of the English court, and with a royal diadem upon his brow, the mimic impersonation of Charles the Second.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] The intelligent reader, familiar with the Odyssey, need not to be reminded that with this wand of Moly, which Mercury presented to Ulysses, the Grecian hero was enabled to restore his unhappy companions, who, by the magic of the goddess Circe, had been transformed into swine.
[30] A true copy from the records.
[31] “Cromwell,” says an old writer, “hath beat up his drums clean through the Old Testament. You may learn the genealogy of our Saviour by the names of his regiment. The muster-master has no other list than the first chapter of St. Matthew.” If the Puritan sergeant had lost this roll, Nehemiah XII. would serve him instead.
[32] The actual name of one of the Puritans.
[33] General Monk, the restorer of royalty.
[34] The Puritans believed the period of the revolution to be the latter days spoken of in prophecy.