amusements, is, unquestionably, their due. A great number of them, however, are of a different description; and, while they point out the manifold rights exercised by the Master of the Revels, and the variety of objects to which his official rule extended, afford us, also, a standard by which we may measure and compare the diversions of our forefathers with those of ourselves.

Sir Henry Herbert granted, on the 20th August, 1623, a license, gratis, to John Williams, and four others, to make a shew of an elephant, for a year; on the 5th of September, to make shew of a live beaver; on the 9th June 1638, to make shew of an outlandish creature, called a possum (an opossum); a license for a Dutchman to shew two dromedaries, for a year, for which the licenser received one pound; a warrant to Grimes, for shewing the camel. On the 14th August 1624, a license was granted to Edward James to set forth a shewing glass called the world's wonder. On the 27th of August 1623, a license was granted to Barth. Cloys, with three assistants, to make shew of a musical organ with divers

motions in it; to make shew of an Italian motion; to shew a looking-glass; to shew the philosopher's lanthorn; to shew a virginal. A license was granted to Henry Monford and others, for tumbling and vaulting, with other tricks of sleight of hand, for a prize at the bull, (play-house,) by Mr Allen and Mr. Lewkner;-to William Sands, and others, to "shew the chaos of the world;" to shew a motion called the creation of the world; to shew certain freaks of charging and discharg ing of a gun. A license to Mr. Lowings, on the 18th of February 1630, for allowing of a Dutch vaulter at their houses (the Globe and Blackfriars theatres). A warrant to Francis Nicolini, an Italian, and his company, to dance on the ropes; to use interludes and masques; and to sell his powders and balsam :-to John Puncteus, a Frenchman, professing physic, with ten in his company, to exercise the quality of playing for a year, and to sell his drugs. On the 6th of March, a license was given, gratis, to Alexander Kukelson, to teach the art of music and dancing for one year;

a license to Thomas Gibson to make shew of pictures in wax.

With the other privileges of the office of master of the revels appears to have been connected that of licensing books, during the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, as we may collect from his receiving a fee for allowing a translation of Ovid's Epistles to be published; another, for the same permission conceded to Calia, a poem, by Lord Brook; another, for the publication of some verses, done by a boy of thirteen, one Cowley.*

PERSONAL COSTUME.

The writers of fiction, in general, like the managers of our dramatic entertainments in former days, are ludicrously inattentive to the appropriate habiliments of the characters whom they bring most prominently forwards to the reader's notice, as the heroes and heroines of their stories. It seems to be their

Chalmer's Supple. Apolog. for Believers, &c. p. 208.

main object to make them either elegant or bewitching; and when they do dress them, instead of preserving the proper keeping of time and place, by an attention to the characteristical clothing of the day, these exquisites are habited from a certain beau ideal wardrobe of the author's, with an attire that bears no resemblance to mortal fashions; nor squares with any modification of dandyism which has ever existed since the first establishment of the tailor's vocation. Not so the Author of Waverley. Correct in this, as in all other imitations of existing circumstances, he has paid particular attention to the personal costume of his characters. Whatever his epoch may be, we find these personages in the prodress of their day and country; and from the time of King John to the reign of George the Second, there is no discrepancy between the garb he allots to them, and the actual productions of the toilettes and wardrobes of their respective æras. It is true that this rigid observance of costume places a writer in a situation of some difficulty; for so closely is the idea of beauty or dignity associated in

per

our minds with certain pleasing arrangements of dress, and so apt are we to consider those arrangements as exclusively pleasing, to which we have been accustomed; that any considerable departure from them, in an object proposed to our esteem or regard, has an unquestionable tendency to lessen one or the other of these feelings with respect to that object. No stronger proof of this can be mentioned, than the general effect produced upon light minds (and how many minds are of this description) by the garb of the Quaker. Who will deny, that, notwithstanding its good sense, peculiar neatness, and obvious adaptation to useful purposes, when the eye first rests upon it, a feeling of the ridiculous is excited. in many a common observer; and that it requires a recollection of the solid worth and high integrity which is almost universally concealed beneath the broad beaver, the squarecut coat, and the entire suit of plain drab, to compose the tickled fancy of such an observer into any thing like soberness and respect. Hence, to array those creations of the brain, which are intended to interest the passions, or