Polynesian., 1856-11-08
Gle polpnesian.
tFrom the North British Review.l

Surely these Puritans were dramatic enough.
poetic enough, picturesque enough. We do not
lsPeak OF such fanatics Bafour of Burey, or any
other eXtravagant person whom it NAV have suited
Walter Scott to take as typical parsonage We
lsPeak OF the average Puritan nobleman gentleman,
Imerchant, or farmer, and hold him to have been a
picturesque and poetical mana man of higher
aglnation and deeper feeling than the average
lo1 Court poets, and man of sound taste also.
Is to be said for his opinions about the stage
mas been said already; but it seems to have es-
caped most persons notice, that either all England
Is grown very foolish, or the Puritan opinions on
several matters have been justified by time.
In the matter of dress and of manners. the Pu-
rltan triumph has been complete. Even their
worst enemies have come over to their side, and
the wAlrigg of time has brought aboutits revenge
Their canons of taste have become those of all
England, and High Churchmen, who still call them
round-heads and cropped ears, go about rounder-
headed and closer cropt than they ever went
They held 1t more rational to cut the hair to COM
Portable length than to wear efeminate curls down
the back. And we cut ours much shorter than thew
lever did, They held with the Spaniards, then
the finest gentlemen in the world that sad l. e.
dark colors, above all black, were the fttest for
stately and earnest gentlemen. We ALL from the
Iractarlan to the Anythingaran, exactly of the
same opinion. They held that lace. perfumes and
ljewelry on a man were marks of unmanly foppish-
ness and vanity and so hold the finest gentlemen
IN England now. They thought it equally absurd
and sinful for a man to carry his income on his
back, and bedzen himself out in reds blues and
greens, ribbons, knots, sashes, and treble quad
ruple dGdaan rufs, built up on iron and timber, IA
! TACT which have more arches in them for pride
than London Bridge for use." We, if we met such
ruffed and ruffied worthy as used to swagger by
hundreds up and down Pau's Walk, not knowing
how to get dinner, much less to pay his tailor,
should look on him as firstly fool and second
ly s~Indler; while, if we met an old Puritan, we
should consider him man gracefully and pictur-
| esquely drest, but withal in the most sobriety of
good taste and when we discovered, las we prob
ably should,) over and above, that the harlequin
cavalier hId box of salve and pair of dice in
one pocket, pack of cards and few pawnbrokers'
duplicates in the other that his thoughts were al
together of citizens wives, and their too easy vr
turc and that he could not open his mouth without
dozen oaths, we should consider the Puritan,
,even though he did quote Scripture somewhat
through bis nose,) the gentleman and the cour-
tier most offensive specimen of the &" snob tri-
umPhant," glorying in his shame. The picture is
not ours, even the Puritan's. 1t is Bishop
Halls, Bishop Earle's-iti is Beaumont's, Fletch-
ers, Jonsons ShakspeaFes, the picture which every
lramatist, well satirist, has drawn of the
= gallant of the seventeenth century. No one
read those writers honestly without seeing that
the Puritan, and not the Cavalier conception of
what British gentlemen should be, is the one ac
cepted by the whole nation at this day.
In applying the same canons to the dress of wo-
men, they were wrong. As in other matters, they
had hold of one pole of double truth, and erred
IN applying 1t exclusively to all cases. But there
are two things to be said for them; first, that the
dress of that day palpably an incentive TO the
prOfgacy of that day, and therefore had to be pro-
tested against; IN these more moral times, orna-
ments and fashions may be harnlessly used, which
then could not be used without harm. And next,
it is undeniable that sober dressing is more and |
more becoming the fashion among well-bred wo-
men, and that among them, too, the Puritan
are gaining ground.
But as for these Puritans having been merely the |
sour, narrow, inhuman persons they are vulgarly |
supposed to have been, creddt JudRus. There |
were and narrow men enough among them; |
so there were in the opposite party. No Puritan
could have had less poetry in him, less taste, less
feeling, than Laud himself. But is there no poet
ry save words? no drama save that which is pre-
sented on the stage? Is this glorious earth, and
the sonls of living men, mere prose, as long as
SO cdrent rdte SdcrO,' who will, forsooth, do them
the honor 10 make poetry out of a little of them,
(and how little y by translatng them into words,
which he himself, just in proportion as ne is good
poet, VIII confess to be clumsy, tawdry, ineffectu
al? Was there no poetry in these Puritans, be-
cause they wrote no poetry? We do not mean
now the unwritten tragedy of the battle psalm and
the charge; but simply idyllic poetry and quiet
home drama, love-poetry of the heart and the !
hearth, and the beauties of everyday human hfe
Take the most commonplace of them: was Zeal
for-Truth rhoresby, of rhoresby Rise in Deeping
Fen, because his father had thought fit to give him
an ugly and silly name, the less noble lad Did
his name prevent his being six feet high? Were
his shoulders the less broad for it, his cheek the
less ruddy for it? He wore his f1axen hair OF the
same length that every one now wears theirs, IN
stead of letting it hang half way to his waist in
essenced curls; but he therefore the less OF
true Vikings son, bold-hearted as his sea-roving
ancestors, who won the Danelagh by Canute's side,
and settled there on Thoresby Rise, to grow wheat
and breed horses, generation succeeding genera
ion, in the old moated granger. He carried BIZ
Die in his jackboots but did that prevent him. as
Oliver rode past him with approving smile, on
Naseby field thinking himself a very handsome
elbow, with his mustache and imperial, and bright
ed coat and cuirass well polished, in spite of many
dint as he sat his fathers great black horse as
gracefully and firmly as any long-locked and es-
enced cavalier in front of him? Or did it prevent
him thinking too, for moment, with throb of the
leart that sweet cousin Patience far away at home
could she but see him, might have the same opinion
IF him as he had of himself? Was he the worse
or the thought2 He was certainly not the worse
or checking il the next instant, with manly shame
or letting such carna vanities" rise in his heart,
While he was 'doing the Lords work. in the teeth d
If death and hell: but was there no poetry in BIN
hcnp No poetry in him, five minutes after, as the i
ong raper swung round his head. redder and red
Ter at every sweep? We are befooled by names. v
Call him Crusader instead of round head, and he
Gems al once granting him only sincerity, which o
le had, and that of a right awful kind, as COM
,ete knight-errant as ever watched and prayed,
re putting on his spurs, in fantastic Gothic chapel,
,eneath ..storied windows richly dight." Was L
here no poetry in him, either, half hour after
Yards as he lay bleeding the corpse of the p
-aant horse waiting for his turn with the surgeon,