of the little Savoyard, it has ceased to have an exclusive application.

With regard to puppets in England, those wooden ladies and gentlemen once figured largely in our church-shows, interludes, and pageants. The names of the puppet masters have come down to us, from Pad, Cookley, Powell, and the daughter of Colley Cibber, to no less a man than Curran, who, taking upon himself, in sport, the charge of a show for one night, found it so easy when speaking for the mute actors to maintain both sides of an argument that he was therefore convinced of his excellent aptitude for the law.

Pepys, as usual, affords us again illustrations of the fashion which attached to puppets in his day. From his brief journalizing we obtain a world of information on this matter. Thus we find him recording:-" 12th Nov. 1661. My wife and I to Bartholomew Fayre, with puppets (which I had seen once before, and the play without puppets often); but though I love the play as much as ever I did, yet I do not like the puppets at all, but think it to be a lessening of it." On the 9th May, in the following year, we find him in Covent Garden, “to see an Italian puppet-play, that is within the rayles there, the best that ever I saw, and great resort of gallants." In a fortnight he takes poor Mrs. Pepys to the same play. In October, he says:- "Lord Sandwich is at Whitehall with the King, before whom the puppetplays I saw this summer in Covent Garden are acted this night" On the 30th August, 1667, being with a merry party at Walthamstow, he left his wife to get home as well as she could; he "to Bartholomew Fayre, to walk up and down, and there, among other things, find my Lady Castlemaine at a puppet-play, Patient Grizell,' and the street full of people expecting her coming out. I confess I did wonder at her courage to come abroad, thinking the people would abuse her; but they, silly people, do not know the work she makes; and therefore suffered her with great

respect to take coach, and so away without at all."

any trouble

The last allusion made by Pepys on this subject forms an admirable commentary on the approving ecstasy expressed by the royalists at the lashing which the "Precisians" received at the hands of Lantern's puppets in Jonson's comedy. On the 5th September, 1668, Pepys is again on the old ground, "to see the play 'Bartholomew Faire,' and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only" ( he adds) "the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale, and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest."

I began this chapter with a quotation from Puysieux—I may end it with that just cited from Pepys; and therewith, lowering the curtain of my little theatre, I beg the indulgence of my audience for the succeeding portions of what I have respectfully to bring before them ;-something more especially touching Tailors, and the Man whose making is to tailors due! First, however, to treat the matter reverently, let us inquire what influenced the ancient corporation in their selection of a protecting Saint.

TOUCHING TAILORS.

"Rem acu tetigisti."-HORACE.

"You have treated of a matter about the needle."

Translated by a Merchant Tailors' Pupil.

"Sit merita Laus!"-ST. WILLIAM, ABP.

Sit, merry Tailors."

Freely rendered by the Saint's Chaplain.

WHY DID THE TAILORS CHOOSE ST. WILLIAM

FOR THEIR PATRON?

"King David's confessor is worth a whole calendar of Williams.” LUTHERAN TAILOR.

WHY did the tailors choose St. William for their patron? Ah, why? I confess it puzzles me to furnish a reply; and I would not be editor of that pleasant paper Notes and Queries,' if my official hours were to be passed in furnishing answers to such questions.

I can understand why St. Nicholas is the patron of children. The Saint once came upon a dozen or two in a tub, cut up, pickled, and ready for home consumption or foreign exportation, and he restored them all to life by a wave of his wand,—of his hand, I should say, but I was thinking of Harlequin; and thenceforth parents very properly neglected their children, knowing that Nicholas was their commissioned curator.

I can comprehend why "St. John Colombine" is the patron saint of honest workmen. I heard Dr. Manning, the other day, tell his story from that thimble of a pulpit in the Roman Catholic Chapel at Brook Green. This John was a journeyman tailor (or of some as honest vocation) given to strong drink and hot wrath. He was one day made insanely furious because his real Colombine, his wife, had not got his dinner ready according to order. The good housewife bethought her for a moment, and thereupon, after turning aside, placed before him, not bread, but biography; not a loaf and a salad, but the 'Lives of the Saints.' John