Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/167

Rh observe the very model of a Cavalier, with the curling lovelock, the fantastically trimmed beard, the embroidery, the ornamented rapier, the gilded dagger, and all other foppishnesses that distinguished the wild gallants who rode headlong to their overthrow in the cause of King Charles. This is Morton of Merry Mount, who has come hither to hold a council with Endicott, but will shortly be his prisoner. Yonder pale, decaying figure of a white-robed woman who glides slowly along the street, is the Lady Arabella, looking for her own grave in the virgin soil. That other female form, who seems to be talking—we might almost say preaching or expounding in the centre of a group of profoundly attentive auditors, is Ann Hutchinson. And here comes Vane.

&quot;But, my dear sir,&quot; interrupts the same gentleman who before questioned the showman s genealogical accuracy, &quot;allow me to observe, that these historical personages could not possibly have met together in the Main-street. They might, and probably did, all visit our old town, at one time or another, but not simultaneously; and you have fallen into anachronisms that I positively shudder to think of!&quot;

&quot;The fellow,&quot; adds the scarcely civil critic, &quot; has learned a bead-roll of historic names, whom he lugs into his pictorial puppet-show, as he calls it, helter-skelter, without caring whether they were contemporaries or not,—and sets them all by the ears together. But was there ever such a fund of impudence! To hear his running commentary, you would suppose that these miserable slips of painted pasteboard, with hardly the remotest outlines of the human figure, had all the character and expression of Michael Angelo's pictures. Well!—go on, sir!&quot;

&quot;Sir, you break the illusion of the scene,&quot; mildly remonstrates the showman.

&quot;Illusion! What illusion?&quot; rejoins the critic, with a contemptuous snort. &quot;On the word of a gentleman, I see nothing illusive in the wretchedly bedaubed sheet of canvass that forms your back-ground, or in these pasteboard slips that hitch and jerk along the front. The only illusion, permit me to say, is in the puppet-showman's tongue,—and that but a wretched one, into the bargain!&quot;