There was
some shadow of an attempt of this kind in the mode of
celebrating the day on which the political year of the colony
commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered splendour, a
colourless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had
beheld in proud old London--we will not say at a royal
coronation, but at a Lord Mayor's show--might be traced in the
customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the
annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders of
the commonwealth--the statesman, the priest, and the
soldier--seemed it a duty then to assume the outward state and
majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked
upon as the proper garb of public and social eminence. All came
forth to move in procession before the people's eye, and thus
impart a needed dignity to the simple framework of a government
so newly constructed.
Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, in
relaxing the severe and close application to their various modes
of rugged industry, which at all other times, seemed of the same
piece and material with their religion. Here, it is true, were
none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily
have found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of
James--no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his
harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to
his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no
Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a
hundred years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the
very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy.
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