The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-09-12 00:00:00

BAZAAR AND FETE AT WIMBORNE.

The old Puritans who pot down the May-poles and
banished the actors in England, and whose cousins
instituted the "blue laws" in Massachusetts were
not without a certain amount of candour and
honesty. It was then as ep w, • fiercely vexed
question as to how people should amuse themselves.
The grim Puritans gave a very plain answer to the
interrogation by declaring that people should not be
permitted to amuse themselves at all. "All work
and no play" was the motto both of the Cromwellians
and the Pilgrim Pathera, and they cared not how dull
a boy Jack beam& We knew what • terribly
dissolute reaction in this oonntry followed upon the
stern system of repression enforced by the Govern-
ment of the Commonwealth. Our forefathers,
doubtless thought that they were establishing
morality on a firm basis when they made dancing a
statutable offence, and drinking of " healthy" a mis-
demeanour—When they decreed that smoking • pipe
on the Sabbath should be punishable by the pillory,
and that sweethearts who kissed one another at
porting should be whipped. It would be difficult
to deny that much of the brutality which
characterised the sports and amusements of the
English people during the seventeenth century were
due to the fanatical opposition of every kind of
recreation, however rational it might be, which
distinguished the Puritans. Coarse end noisy stage
plays, cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bull-baiting,
baclger-dfawing, duck hunting, were common
dilmseemente not only of the humbler classes, but
of those who asserted themselves and were believed
to be their betters during the reigns of the three
first sovereigns of the House of Brunswick. Nor
did any very appreciable softening of the national
manners take place under the sway of the fourth.
A better feeling with regard to public sports and
pastimes now prevails. What a contrast is there
between the recreations of the million to-day to
those in vogue even so late as twenty and five-and-
twenty years ago! It is true that we do not look
upon the present age from as optimist point of view.
'We do not deny that some of our, so called
"popular" amusements, especially in :rge towns,
W largeate far from unobjectionable. We don't say that
the people have become suddenly virtuous and
suddenly sensible. The change is a slow one, and
not yet completed; but that it is in progress
cannot, be denied. The people have begun to
read and to think. How this happier state
of things has been brought about we will
not stop to inquire. Numerous have been the agencies
employed. Undoubtedly the bringing together of
the several classes of society by such means as
harvest boom, sower and vegetable shows, volunteer
reviews, and the like, kens denunisoli towards
teaching the haniblse slams to rsepsen thetasalves,
and to impress apes time kr lisedsiglase walks of life
the necessity ot enenaragiag what is worthy of
ensouragemsat, well knowing that the public appetite
pews on whet it feeds no, and that
"Pleasures, or erase or clglitlgi
_seellaiskxel, •
Our issatest evils cairptatsgrgoeit?
We thee*** thet lete.7lll4P 44fir 41111 r. 7.00 th.

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